V. The Fourth Amendment
The Constitutional Amendment which must first be discussed provides:
The right the of people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. -U.S. CONST. Amend. IV.
This Amendment “. . . was specifically propounded and ratified with the memory of . . . Entick v. Carrington, 95 Eng. Rep. 807 (1765) in mind”, stated Circuit Judge Skelly Wright in Zweibon v. Mitchell, 516 F.2d 594, 618 n.67 (D.C. Circ. 1975) (en banc) (plurality opinion). Justice Douglas, in his concurrence in the Keith case, also noted the significance of Entick in our history, stating:
For it was such excesses as the use of general warrants and the writs of assistance that led to the ratification of the Fourth Amendment. In Entick v. Carrington (citation omitted), decided in 1765, one finds a striking parallel to the executive warrants utilized here. The Secretary of State had issued general executive warrants to his messengers authorizing them to roam about and to seize libelous material and libellants of the sovereign. Entick, a critic of the Crown, was the victim of one such general search during which his seditious publications were impounded. He brought a successful damage action for trespass against the messengers. The verdict was sustained on appeal. Lord Camden wrote that if such sweeping tactics were validated, then the secret cabinets and bureaus of every subject in this kingdom will be thrown open to the search and inspection of a messenger, whenever the secretary of state shall think fit to charge, or even to suspect, a person to be the author, printer, or publisher of a seditious libel.’ (citation omitted) In a related and similar proceeding, Huckle v. Money (citation omitted), the same judge who presided over Entick’s appeal held for another victim of the same despotic practice, saying ‘(t)o enter a man’s house by virtue of a nameless warrant, in order to procure evidence, is worse than the Spanish Inquisition . . .’ See also Wilkes v. Wood (citation omitted), …[t]he tyrannical invasions described and assailed in Entick, Huckle, and Wilkes, practices which also were endured by the colonists, have been recognized as the primary abuses which ensured the Warrant Clause a prominent place in our Bill of Rights. U.S. v. U.S. District Court, 407 U.S. at 328-329 (Douglas, J., concurring).
Justice Powell, in writing for the court in the Keith case also wrote that:
Over two centuries ago, Lord Mansfield held that common-law principles prohibited warrants that ordered the arrest of unnamed individuals who the officer might conclude were guilty of seditious
libel. ‘It is not fit,’ said Mansfield, ‘that the receiving or judging of the information should be left to the discretion of the officer. The magistrate ought to judge; and should give certain directions to the officer.’ (citation omitted).
Lord Mansfield’s formulation touches the very heart of the Fourth Amendment directive: that, where practical, a governmental search and seizure should represent both the efforts of the officer to gather evidence of wrongful acts and the judgment of the magistrate that the collected evidence is sufficient to justify invasion of a citizen’s private premises or conversation. Inherent in the concept of a warrant is its issuance by a ‘neutral and detached magistrate.’ (citations omitted) The further requirement of ‘probable cause’ instructs the magistrate that baseless searches shall not proceed. U.S. v. U.S. District Court, 407 U.S. at 316.
The Fourth Amendment, accordingly, was adopted to assure that Executive abuses of the power to search would not continue in our new nation.
Justice White wrote in 1984 in United States v. Karo, 468 U.S. 705 (1984), a case involving installation and monitoring of a beeper which had found its way into a home, that a private residence is a place in which society recognizes an expectation of privacy; that warrantless searches of such places are presumptively unreasonable, absent exigencies. Id. at 714-715. Karo is consistent with Katz where Justice Stewart held that:
‘Over and again this Court has emphasized that the mandate of the (Fourth) Amendment requires adherence to judicial processes,’ (citation omitted) and that searches conducted outside the judicial process, without prior approval by judge or magistrate, are per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment – subject only to a few specifically established and well-delineated exceptions. Katz, 389 U.S. at 357.
Justice Powell’s opinion in the Keith case also stated that:
The Fourth Amendment does not contemplate the executive officers of Government as neutral and disinterested magistrates. Their duty and responsibility are to enforce the laws, to investigate, and to prosecute. (citation omitted) But those charged with this investigative and prosecutorial duty should not be the sole judges of when to utilize constitutionally sensitive means in pursuing their tasks. The historical judgment, which the Fourth Amendment accepts, is that unreviewed executive discretion may yield too readily to pressures to obtain incriminating evidence and overlook potential invasions of privacy and protected speech. U.S. v. U.S. District Court, 407 U.S. at 317.
Accordingly, the Fourth Amendment, about which much has been written, in its few words requires reasonableness in all searches. It also requires prior warrants for any reasonable search, based upon prior-existing probable cause, as well as particularity as to persons, places, and things, and the interposition of a neutral magistrate between Executive branch enforcement officers and citizens. In enacting FISA, Congress made numerous concessions to stated executive needs. They include delaying the applications for warrants until after surveillance has begun for several types of exigencies, reducing the probable cause requirement to a less stringent standard, provision of a single court of judicial experts, and extension of the duration of approved wiretaps from thirty days (under Title III) to a ninety day term.
All of the above Congressional concessions to Executive need and to the exigencies of our present situation as a people, however, have been futile. The wiretapping program here in litigation has undisputedly been continued for at least five years, it has undisputedly been implemented without regard to FISA and of course the more stringent standards of Title III, and obviously in violation of the Fourth Amendment.
The President of the United States is himself created by that same Constitution.
