COURT SAYS WARRANT NEEDED TO USE HEAT-SENSING DEVICE AGAINST HOME

Washington - Police must get warrants before using devices that search
through walls for criminal activity, the Supreme Court ruled Monday in
a decision that bolstered protections against high-tech monitoring of
Americans' homes.

The 5-4 decision, in a lineup of justices that shattered the normal
ideological split, struck down the use without a warrant of a
heat-sensing device that led to marijuana charges against an Oregon
man.

Conservative Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the majority that police
conducted an illegal search from outside the man's home. Liberal
Justice John Paul Stevens backed the officers in a dissent.

The two jabbed at each other throughout their respective opinions,
with Stevens - adopting the conservatives' typical stance - accusing
Scalia of failing "to heed the tried and true counsel of judicial
restraint." Scalia called Stevens' conclusion that police acted
constitutionally an "extraordinary assertion."

The ruling reversed a lower court decision that said federal officers'
use of the heat-sensing device was not a search of Danny Lee Kyllo's
home - and therefore a warrant was not needed.

Scalia wrote that the court could not cast away the Florence, Ore.,
man's Fourth Amendment protections against illegal searches to allow
police to use "sense-enhancing technology."

Any evidence obtained from the interior of someone's home, which could
not have been gathered legally by a physical intrusion, constitutes a
search, he wrote. That's especially true, he said, when the technology
is not in general public use.

"This assures preservation of that degree of privacy against
government that existed when the Fourth Amendment was adopted," Scalia
concluded.

Kyllo was arrested in January 1992 and charged with growing marijuana
at his home. Police had trained a thermal imaging device on his home
and found signs of high-intensity lights. Using those images,
electricity records and an informant's tip, police got a warrant and
searched Kyllo's home.

Last year, the Supreme Court ruled that police must get bus
passengers' consent or a search warrant before squeezing their luggage
to see if drugs might be inside. The court also requires a warrant to
put an eavesdropping "bug" in someone's home or in a telephone booth.

But the justices have said police do not need a warrant to go through
someone's garbage left on the curb, fly over a backyard to see what is
on the ground or put a beeper on a car to make it easier to follow.