FL1: Video surveillance in a hospital room here was not under a reasonable expectation of privacy

Defendant was charged with child abuse murder in Florida. After the death of her child in Florida, she moved to West Virginia. Defendant was suspected there of child abuse by Munchausen syndrome by proxy, and video surveillance was set up in her child’s hospital room in West Virginia to record her interactions with a second child. Under the narrow facts of this case, she did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in that room that there would be no surveillance. State v. Butler, 1 So. 3d 242 (Fla. App. 1DCA 2008):

We do not read Jones or any analogous authority to create an unbending and unequivocal rule that individuals within hospital rooms invariably have reasonable and broad expectations of privacy. Such a reading would be counter to the dictate of Katz that “the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places.” Katz, 389 U.S. at 351. Instead, the case law emphasizes that the objective reasonableness of an expectation of privacy in a hospital setting turns on the particular circumstances of each case. See, e.g., State v. Stott, 794 A.2d 120, 127 (N.J. 2002) (noting that “a patient admitted for long-term care may enjoy a greater expectation of privacy than one rushed to an emergency room and released that same day. Moreover, the nature or scope of the privacy interest may differ depending on the facts and circumstances of a given case.”); People v. Brown, 151 Cal. Rptr. 749, 754 (Cal. Ct. App. 1979) (observing that “the question of privacy in a hospital does not merely turn on a general expectation of privacy in use of a given space, but to some degree depends on the person whose conduct is questioned. … [A] patient may well waive his right of privacy as to hospital personnel, [but] it is obvious that he has not turned ‘his’ room into a public thoroughfare.”).

The surveillance at issue here occurred in a type of space in which, under some circumstances, individuals have held reasonable expectations of privacy, but that alone does not mean appellee’s expectation was reasonable in this case. See Katz, 389 U.S. at 351; accord Brown, 151 Cal. Rptr. at 754 (observing that “the question of privacy in a hospital … to some degree depends on the person whose conduct is questioned”). We find the trial court erred by apparently concluding that society is prepared to recognize as reasonable appellee’s expectation that her interactions with her heavily monitored and very sick child in a hospital bed would remain private.

First, no record evidence supports the conclusion that appellee’s presence in her son’s room was so established that she would reasonably have regarded the room as affording her a quantum of privacy equivalent to that she would expect in a hotel room. In fact, although nurses brought meals to Butler in the room, Butler alleged in her motion to suppress that hospital staff urged her to stay overnight, suggesting it was no foregone conclusion that she would stay in the room at all.

. . .

We emphasize that our conclusion regarding the reasonableness of appellee’s expectation of privacy is limited to the peculiar and, fortunately, rare facts presented in this case. Our opinion by no means stands for the proposition that the Fourth Amendment permits the government to set up video surveillance in private hospital rooms indiscriminately. That, quite simply, is not the question confronting us. We merely hold that, as to appellee’s interactions with her son in the circumstances presented here, she did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy. Because no search in the constitutional sense occurred, Butler’s right to be free from unreasonable searches has not been implicated.