Kyllo v. United States

Abstract

In Kyllo v. United States, the Supreme Court handed down an apparently bright-line rule stating that government use of devices not in “general public use” (e.g., thermal imagers), which can be used to view the “details of a home,” constitutes a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. This article argues that the Court’s decision is flawed for several reasons: (a) There is no agreement over the “general public use” standard, (b) there is no agreement over what can be considered “details of the home,” (c) the Court failed to exercise judicial restraint, (d) the Court restricted law enforcement officials’ ability to draw “inferences” about criminal activity, and perhaps most important, (e) the decision does not place restrictions on the use of thermal imagers for other law enforcement purposes besides the direct procurement of criminal evidence.