General Aspects of Standing

Before we engage in examining a Fourth Amendment issue, we must first determine whether the defendant has “standing” to challenge the search.  We will spend the next couple of weeks on standing, and this post simply addresses the concept of standing.  And here it is – in a criminal proceeding, a suspect simply cannot complain about police searches of another person’s property or person.  Put another way, a person can only challenge a violation of his or her rights, not the rights of another.  And this is a threshold issue – meaning this question must be answered before addressing whether a search or seizure was reasonable. 

 Legal Supplement

U.S. v. Salvucci, 448 US 83 (1980),

Mere possession of a seized good does not confer standing.  Standing is solely based on whether the defendant has a reasonable expectation of privacy in the area searched. 

Minnesota v. Carter, 525 U.S. 83 (1998),

Central to our analysis was the idea that in determining whether a defendant is able to show the violation of his (and not someone else’s) Fourth Amendment rights, the “definition of those rights is more properly placed within the purview of substantive Fourth Amendment law than within that of standing.” 

We have held that “capacity to claim the protection of the Fourth Amendment depends … upon whether the person who claims the protection of the Amendment has a legitimate expectation of privacy in the invaded place.”

The text of the Amendment suggests that its protections extend only to people in “their” houses.