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FL1: Video surveillance in a hospital room here was not under a reasonable expectation of privacy

By John Wesley Hall, Jr.

Defendant was charged with child abuse murder in Florida. After the death of her child in Florida, she moved to West Virginia. Defendant was suspected there of child abuse by Munchausen syndrome by proxy, and video surveillance was set up in her child's hospital room in West Virginia to record her interactions with a second child. Under the narrow facts of this case, she did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in that room that there would be no surveillance. State v. Butler, 2008 Fla. App. LEXIS 20360 (1st Dist. December 31, 2008): We do not read Jones or any analogous authority to create an unbending and unequivocal rule that individuals within hospital rooms invariably have reasonable and broad expectations of privacy. Such a reading would be counter to the dictate of Katz that "the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places...continue to full post

Full post as published by Fourth Amendment on January 05, 2009 (boomark / email).