Argument of Chief Justice Rehnquist
Mr. Rehnquist: I have the opinion of the Court to announce in No. 98-9349, Steven Dewayne Bond versus United States.
Petitioner Bond was a passenger on a Greyhound bus that left California bound for Little Rock, Arkansas.
A Border Patrol agent boarded the bus at a place called Sierra Blanca, Texas which is about 80 miles southeast of El Paso on Interstate 10.
After the agent had checked the immigration status of the passengers he began squeezing the soft luggage in the overhead bins.
When he squeezed petitioner’s canvas bag, he noticed a “brick-like” object.
After obtaining petitioner’s consent to open the bag, the agent discovered a brick of methamphetamine.
The brick had been wrapped in duct tape until it was oval-shaped and then wrapped in a pair of pants.
Petitioner was indicted for conspiracy to possess, and possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine.
He moved to suppress the drugs, arguing that the Border Patrol agent had conducted an illegal search of his bag.
The District Court denied the motion petitioner was convicted.
The Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction.
In an opinion filed today, with the Clerk of Court, we reverse.
It is undisputed that petitioner had a protected privacy interest in his carry-on bag.
The government argues that by exposing the bag to public handling petitioner lost a reasonable expectation that it would not be physically manipulated.
The government relies on our cases that hold that matters open to public observation are not protected by the Fourth Amendment.
But those cases involved visual as opposed to tactile observation and thus do not require the result in favor of the Government.
Our traditional Fourth Amendment analysis embraces two questions: first, we ask whether the individual has sought to preserve something as private.
Here petitioner sought to preserve privacy by using an opaque bag and by placing that bag directly above his seat.
Second, we ask whether an individual’s expectation of privacy is one that society is prepared to recognize as reasonable.
When a bus passenger places a bag in an overhead bin, he expects that other passengers or bus employees may move it for one reason or another, but he does not expect that his bag will be physically manipulated in an exploratory manner and that’s exactly what happened here.
We therefore hold that the agent’s conduct violated the Fourth Amendment.
Justice Breyer has filed a dissenting opinion in which Justice Scalia joins.
