Rolando Antuain Williamson v. United States

The definition of “search” that was introduced by Justice Harlan in Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967), and subsequently embraced by the Court, requires considering whether “a person ha[s] exhibited an actual (subjective) expectation of privacy” and whether “the expectation” is “one that society is prepared to recognize as ‘reasonable.’ ” Id. at 361 (Harlan, J., concurring). As new technologies have emerged, “Katz has yielded an often unpredictable— and sometimes unbelievable—jurisprudence,” most of all in “data privacy cases.” Carpenter v. United States, 585 U.S. 296, 394-395 (2018) (Gorsuch, J., dissenting). Here, law enforcement officers conducted surreptitious and continuous video surveillance of Rolando Williamson’s backyard for ten months. Williamson’s yard is largely blocked from public view by an eight-foot privacy fence, but officers mounted a camera high on a utility pole so that they could look over the fence. Applying the Katz test, the District Court denied Williamson’s motion to suppress the evidence collected in this manner, and the Eleventh Circuit affirmed. The questions presented are:

1. Whether a “search” occurs when the government takes a purposeful, investigative act directed toward an individual’s home and curtilage, regardless of whether the individual has a “reasonable expectation of privacy” in the area; and

2. Whether, even under Katz, long-term, continuous, and surreptitious surveillance of an individual’s home and curtilage constitutes a “search.” (i)