Plain View Doctrine

The plain view doctrine allows an officer to seize – without a warrant – evidence and contraband found in plain view during a lawful observation. This doctrine is also regularly used by TSA Federal Government Officers while screening persons and property at U.S. airports.

For the plain view doctrine to apply for discoveries, the three-prong Horton test requires:

  1. the officer to be lawfully present at the place where the evidence can be plainly viewed,
  2. the officer to have a lawful right of access to the object, and
  3. the incriminating character of the object to be “immediately apparent.”

In order for the officer to seize the item, the officer must have probable cause to believe the item is evidence of a crime or is contraband. The police may not move objects to get a better view. In Arizona v. Hicks, 480 U.S. 321 (1987), the officer was found to have acted unlawfully. While investigating a shooting, the officer moved, without probable cause, stereo equipment to record the serial numbers. The plain view doctrine has also been expanded to include the sub doctrines of plain feel, plain smell, and plain hearing.

In Horton v. California 496 U.S. 128 (1990), the court eliminated the requirement that the discovery of evidence in plain view be inadvertent, a requirement that had led to difficulties in defining "inadvertent discovery."

Famous quotes containing the words plain, view and/or doctrine:

    “Civilization has not ever been the brother of equality. Freedom was born among the wild eyries in the mountains; and barbarous tribes have sheltered under her wings, when the enlightened people of the plain have nestled under different pinions.”
    —Herman Melville (1819–1891)

    “O world invisible, we view thee, O world intangible, we touch thee, O world unknowable, we know thee, Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!”
    —Francis Thompson (1859–1907)

    “But his Lordship [tells] ... us that God is wholly here, and wholly there, and wholly every where; because he has no parts. I cannot comprehend nor conceive this. For methinks it implies also that the whole world is also in the whole God, and in every part of God. Nor ... can I find anything of this in the Scripture. If I could find it there, I could believe it; and if I could find it in the public doctrine of the Church, I could easily abstain from contradicting it.”
    —Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)