SEARCH WARRANT SHOULD NOT BE A PRESS PASS

As a nation of voyeurs, we have grown accustomed to watching people's
personal business offered up on the screen. On shows like Jerry Springer
and Ricki Lake, the participants have voluntarily appeared to air their
dirty laundry. But what about reality-based shows like "Cops," where the
cameras follow police into homes?

These shows make personal and family tragedies into entertainment for the
masses, and the cameras intrude into private living rooms and bedrooms
where they are not invited or welcome. Obscuring faces, which "Cops" does
when it can't get the subject's consent to broadcast, isn't enough to
ensure privacy. Neighbors and friends easily recognize voices and a home's
interior.

Is a search warrant also a press pass? Should police be allowed to use the
authority of a warrant to invite the press into places it couldn't
otherwise go? That question will be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court this
term.

I hope the voyeurs lose.

There aren't many times the right to press freedom should bend to the right
to privacy. Following Princess Diana's death, three bills were introduced
in Congress designed to limit the paparazzi. They were all patently
unconstitutional and didn't pass. Anyone in public is fair game for the
media, even pesky shutterbugs who shadow the famous.

But the home should be a sanctuary from intrusion. Cameras may be free to
be trained on the outside, even through cracks in the blinds, but the
threshold should be inviolate. Not surprisingly, police don't agree.

Police agencies across the country feed the reality-based television
machine by inviting reporters and photographers along on their patrols.
Sometimes, police aggressively promote this form of journalism by calling
reporters to join them when a big bust is about to occur. It's good PR. No
doubt the police like to see their derring- do broadcast on the evening
news or on a nationally syndicated info- tainment show.

Of course, the press has some responsibility for these real-life television
spectacles. Its willingness to invade privacy often shows no ethical
bounds. But the media don't have a legal right to break into people's
homes. Only the police have that right, when properly armed with a warrant,
and with that access comes the corresponding constitutional duty to limit
the intrusion as much as possible. Which is why I hope the Supreme Court
will tell police they can't turn a raid into an open house.

One of two cases on this question before the court involves the forced
entry into the home of Charles and Geraldine Wilson.

At 6:45 a.m. on April 14, 1992, a team of Montgomery County, Md., police
and deputy U.S. marshals entered the Wilsons' home with a Washington Post
reporter and photographer in tow. They had an arrest warrant for the
couple's adult son, Dominic Jerome Wilson. Charles Wilson was in his
underwear, and his wife Geraldine was in a sheer nightgown at the time. The
Washington Post photographer snapped pictures, and the reporter scribbled
notes while Charles Wilson was forced to lie on the floor, with a deputy's
knee in his back and a gun to his head. Deputies left when it became clear
Dominic was not in the home.

The Wilsons, with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, sued the
police and marshals for a violation of the Fourth Amendment's ban on
unreasonable searches. Notably, the attorney volunteering for the case is
Richard Willard, who was an assistant attorney general under Edwin Meese,
President Ronald Reagan's attorney general.

In a ruling that defies common sense, the 4th U.S. Court of Appeals, by a
6-5 vote, found the officers not liable. The court said inviting the press
into a private home to photograph an innocent couple in their nightclothes
was not a violation of a clearly established constitutional right.

Huh? How about four centuries of jurisprudence in England and later here
that says a man's home is his castle? No place is more sacrosanct than the
home under our laws and traditions. It is why the Supreme Court has ruled
that even some illegal products, like obscene material, may be legally kept
in the privacy of one's own home.

The unwarranted intrusion of the home is the reason we have a Fourth
Amendment. The Townshend Acts of 1767 reauthorized the British to use
general warrants that allowed customs agents to snoop around any home they
wished to search for smuggled goods. As a response, the Founders required
warrants to be specific as to location and items to be searched or seized.
Anyone serving the warrant must be acting in furtherance of it or have a
legitimate law enforcement purpose.

Reporters don't fit into this process. Often they don't even provide a
check to abusive police practices, since over time reporters can get
co-opted by police, exchanging favorable stories for better tips. And when
the cameras are rolling, police are just as likely to heap on the swagger
and macho-man antics as to tame their behavior.

The 4th Circuit's decision in the Wilson case put it on a collision course
with two other federal appellate courts that have ruled the other way,
prohibiting police from bringing the media along on intrusive searches and
seizures.

The U.S. Supreme Court will resolve this split in the circuits, and in
doing so will, one hopes, remind police that their job is to protect the
public, not put on a show.

Robyn Blumner is a columnist and editorial writer for the St. Petersburg
(Fla.) Times.

Checked-by: derek rea