By: Francis A. Cavanagh
Throughout our nation’s history, courts have struggled to
balance the individual’s right to be free from unreasonable
searches and seizures against law enforcement’s need to protect the
community. All Americans have a fundamental right to be free
from rash and unreasonable interferences with privacy and from
unfounded charges of crime, yet law enforcement officials have
legitimate and practical needs to discover information in
connection with their efforts to investigate crime and protect the
public interest. The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution was
designed to aid the courts in striking a balance between these two
conflicting interests: law enforcement must first establish
probable cause before a court will issue a search warrant.
But despite the Fourth Amendment’s guidance, courts have found it
difficult to strike a balance because, in each case, the
individual’s right to engage in a particular activity varies, as
does the nature of the crime under investigation. Not
surprisingly, the concept of probable cause has been subject to a
great deal of uncertainty because it must remain adaptable to all
situations.
Recently, in United States v. Martin and United States v.
Coreas the Second Circuit Court of Appeals held that the
defendants’ memberships in online child pornography e-groups were
sufficient to establish probable cause for obtaining search
warrants of their computers and homes. In fact, the court
concluded that probable cause existed to conduct these searches
solely based on the defendants’ memberships, held that the evidence
discovered in these searches was admissible, and upheld their
convictions. Unfortunately, while the majority view has
helped law enforcement convict some of the least sympathetic
individuals in these cases, it has also worked an injustice by
misinterpreting the guarantees of the First and Fourth
Amendments.
As a result of the Martin and Coreas
decisions, future defendants may be subjected to searches based on
their association, even where there is no evidence that they
engaged in anything more than protected speech. In many
instances, the Constitution protects some of the vilest characters
in our society. However, protection of these individuals
ensures that the Constitution guards the rights of all.