W.D.Pa.: Long term pole camera surveillance of front of house valid

Suppression of long term pole camera surveillance of defendant’s front door almost summarily denied. United States v. Gilliam, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 118511 (W.D.Pa. September 4, 2015):

Although the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has not directly ruled on the admissibility of images from a pole camera, the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit addressed this precise issue in United States v. Bucci, 582 F.3d 108, 116-17 (1st Cir. 2009). The Bucci Court held that the defendant had clearly failed to establish that he had an objectively reasonable expectation of privacy. The Court explained:

An individual does not have an expectation of privacy in items or places he exposes to the public. See Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967) (“[T]he Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection.”); see also California v. Ciraolo, 476 U.S. 207, 213, 106 S.Ct. 1809, 90 L.Ed.2d 210 (1986). That legal principle is dispositive here. See Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27, 31-33, 121 S.Ct. 2038, 150 L.Ed.2d 94 (2001) (noting lawfulness of unenhanced visual surveillance of a home).

Id. at 117. Accord United States v. Jackson, 213 F.3d 1269, 1280-81 (10th Cir. 2000), vacated on other grounds, 121 S. Ct. 621, (“use of video equipment and cameras to record activity visible to the naked eye does not ordinarily violate the Fourth Amendment”).

The reasoning in Bucci and Jackson is compelling. In this case, Lamont Wright cannot establish an objectively reasonable expectation of privacy when the images captured by the pole camera were visible to any person who was located in the public street looking at his home. Defendant’s attempt to analogize a pole camera to a GPS device is not persuasive.

Compare recent other cases finding the issue much closer.