Summary Of Kyllo V. United States

In this case Kyllo v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled against the vitric of the lower courts on a 5 to 4 vote. The questions that need to be answered in this case, in my opinion serve a bigger purpose then the case at hand. The case itself is about a man named Danny Kyllo who was growing marijuana plants inside his home illegally. An officer of the U.S Interior Department got a tip that this man was illegally growing plants inside his home and went to investigate this. Obviously a tip from an unknown is not enough information to get a warrant to search the man’s property. So agent Elliot choose to observe his house from the outside and use a thermal imaging device which takes a picture of the home and the homes in the neighborhood to see how much heat is home is radiating compared to the homes around him. This excess heat from his home could help

Claiming the thermal evidence was a violation of the fourth amendment right, your right to privacy within your home and to legal searches. After this case was sent to the Supreme Court, which I agree is where this case belonged, they found that the lower courts judgments were wrong in admitting this evidence. And after reading the facts of the case fully and Justice Scalia’s court opinion, I would have to agree that this case requires further inquiry into the original intent of the fourth amendment. I think that we as citizens do have a right to privacy within are home, however I think that if someone is doing something illegal within their home then there should be proper measurements that are taken to stop them. The reason I think the court should have ruled in the way they did is because this is a case where is begs the question how far can someone go using technology to obtain information that normally would have caused the officer to break the law to