Payton v. New York 445 U.S. 573 (1980)
PAYTON v. NEW YORK 445 U.S. 573 (1980)
the fourth amendment, which the fourteenth makes applicable to the states, says that the "right of people to be secure in their … houses … shall not be violated." Payton was the first case in which the Supreme Court confronted the issue whether police may enter a private home, without an arrest warrant or consent, to make a felony arrest. New York, sustained by its courts, authorized warrantless arrests, by forcible entry if necessary, in any premises, if the police had probable cause to believe a person had committed a felony. In Payton's case the police seized evidence in plain view at the time of arrest and used it to convict him.
A 6–3 Supreme Court, in an opinion by Justice john paul stevens, reversed and held the state statute unconstitutional. Absent exigent circumstances, "a man's house is his castle" and unlike a public place may not be invaded without a warrant. Stevens found slight guidance in history for his position on the special privacy of the home in the case of a felony arrest, but he insisted that the Fourth Amendment required a magistrate's warrant. Justice byron r. white for the dissenters declared that the decision distorted history and severely hampered law enforcement; the amendment required only that a warrantless felony arrest be made on probable cause in daytime.
(See steagald v. united states.)
Leonard W. Levy
(1986)