Justices OK Yard Searches From Planes

The Supreme Court today ruled that police do not need court warrants before searching from airplanes for marijuana growing in fenced-in residential yards.

In a separate decision, the court also ruled that federal regulators may use photographs taken from airplanes flying over manufacturing facilities to help authorities enforce clean-air laws.

The two decisions, one from California and the other from Michigan, were reached on 5-4 votes of the court.

Past rulings have established that police generally must obtain court warrants before they search private homes but do not need them to search “open fields.”

1982 Santa Clara Case

In the California case ruled on today, the court treated fenced-in residential backyards the same as open fields rather than as part of someone’s home.

The California controversy arose after police in 1982 arrested Dante Carlo Ciraolo for growing marijuana in his Santa Clara backyard.

A police officer who had been tipped off about the illegal drug being grown there visited Ciraolo’s house but could not see into the backyard. A six-foot-high outer fence and a 10-foot-high inner fence blocked his view.

The officer chartered an airplane and flew over the yard. He identified and photographed a patch of 73 marijuana plants between eight and 10 feet tall.

Warrant to Enter Yard

Using information gathered during his flight, the officer obtained a search warrant authorizing him to enter Ciraolo’s backyard.

Ciraolo pleaded guilty to cultivating the illegal weed after his request to suppress the evidence gathered by the police officer was denied. But Ciraolo’s conviction was overturned by a state appeals court because the police officer did not get a search warrant before flying over the yard.

In the Michigan case, Dow Chemical Co. had argued that aerial surveillance authorized by the Environmental Protection Agency of the company’s 2,000-acre chemical plant complex in Midland, Mich., violated privacy rights.