Almost 100 years ago, the Supreme Court was forced to decide on the admissibility of evidence from a groundbreaking new technology – the systolic blood pressure test. At the time, the evidence from the systolic blood pressure test – or lie detector test – was held to be inadmissible because it was not “sufficiently established to have gained general acceptance in the particular field in which it belongs.”
Fast-forward almost a century later and the Supreme Court now routinely decides major cases involving technology, reasonable expectations of privacy and the Fourth Amendment. Over a decade ago, the Court aptly noted in Kyllo v. United States that technology has the power to erode Fourth Amendment privacy, and that seems to be exactly what?s happened in the ensuing years. Today, technological advances have given law enforcement powerful new tools at their disposal – stingrays, drones, thermal imaging devices, facial recognition software – to conduct surveillance and investigate criminal activity. Yet courts have been slow to keep pace with these technological changes and they have been split all over the map on what constitutes a violation of the Fourth Amendment?s prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure.
To learn more about how the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has analyzed evolving technologies, please join attorney and forensic expert Herbert Joe as he details the court?s analysis on emerging technologies, from the lie detector test to digital technologies. Mr. Joe presents and discusses Frye vs. U.S. (polygraph machine), Katz vs. U.S. (recording devices), Kyllo vs. U.S. (thermal imaging devices), U.S. vs. Jones (GPS tracking devices), U.S. vs. Wurie and Riley vs. California (smartphone searches) Advances in sciences yield new, novel and high technology, much of which has significant legal ramifications. Unfortunately, technology evolves much faster than the laws can keep up and courts are forced to apply old legal doctrines to novel situations in our new digital world.
Herbert Joe is a forensic scientist with 4 degrees, Graduate Faculty (Law) at the University of Phoenix and a Registered Patent Attorney. A licensed attorney in California, Jason Castillo actively participated in this course.