No. 16-1027 In the Supreme Court of the United States ________________________________ RYAN AUSTIN COLLINS, Petitioner, v. COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA, Respondent. ________________________________ On Writ of Certiorari to the Supreme Court of Virginia ________________________________ BRIEF OF AMICUS CURIAE THE NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION FREEDOM ACTION FOUNDATION IN SUPPORT OF PETITIONER ________________________________ DAVID H. THOMPSON Counsel of Record PETER A. PATTERSON JOHN D. OHLENDORF COOPER & KIRK, PLLC 1523 New Hampshire Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 220-9600 [email protected] Counsel for Amicus Curiae November 20, 2017 i TABLE OF CONTENTS Page TABLE OF AUTHORITIES ...................................... iii INTEREST OF AMICUS CURIAE............................ 1 SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT .................................... 1 ARGUMENT .............................................................. 4 I. The History of the Right Against Unreasonable Searches and Seizures Demonstrates that that Right Has Its Highest and Most Urgent Application in the Home ............................................................ 5 A. The Fourth Amendment Has Its Roots in the Legal and Political Backlash Against the Crown’s Inspection of Pri- vate Homes in the Period Leading to the American Revolution. ................................ 5 1. The Wilkes Cases ................................... 6 2. Entick v. Carrington ............................. 8 3. Paxton’s Case ......................................... 9 B. In Its Original Context, the Fourth Amendment Was Meant Principally To Protect the Sanctity and Privacy of American Homes. ..................................... 10 C. This Court’s Precedents Confirm that the Fourth Amendment’s Highest Pur- pose Is To Defend the Sanctity of the Home. ........................................................ 11 ii II. The Sanctity of the Home Also Plays a Central Role in Safeguarding Many of Our Other Fundamental Constitutional Freedoms. ......................................................... 13 A. The Right to Armed Self-Defense—the Central Component of the Second Amendment—Applies with Full Force Within the Home. ..................................... 13 B. Throughout History, the Shared Im- portance of the Home to Both the Right to Self-Defense and the Right Against Unreasonable Searches Has Informed the Scope of Both Protections. ................. 17 C. The Sanctity of the Home Also Forms the Foundation of Several Other Constitutional Protections. ...................... 20 D. The Scope of the Protection Afforded the Home in the Context of Armed Self-De- fense Extends to Locations Adjacent to the Home, Such as the One at Issue in This Case. ................................................. 23 CONCLUSION ......................................................... 29 iii TABLE OF AUTHORITIES Page CASES Beard v. United States, 158 U.S. 550 (1895) ...... 24, 25 Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616 (1886) ...... 2, 8, 11 Carmouche v. Bouis, 6 La. Ann. 95 (1851) ......... 15, 16 Collins v. Commonwealth, S.E.2d 611 (Va. 2016) ...... 2 District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008) ........................................... 13, 16 Donoghue v. Philadelphia Cty., 2 Pa. 230 (1845) ..... 15 Entick v. Carrington, 19 Howell’s St. Trials 1029 (C. P. 1765) ................................................................ 8 Florida v. Jardines, 569 U.S. 1 (2013) ..................... 12 Georgia v. Randolph, 547 U.S. 103 (2006) ......... 19, 20 Haynes v. State, 17 Ga. 465 (1855) ..................... 23, 24 Huckle v. Money, 95 Eng. Rep. 768 (C.P. 1763) ......... 7 Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967) .............. 12 Miller v. United States, 357 U.S. 301 (1958) ............ 20 Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573 (1980) ................. 19 People v. Rodriguez, 10 Cal. 50 (1858) ...................... 16 Pond v. People, 8 Mich. 150 (1860) ........................... 16 Semayne’s Case, 77 Eng. Rep. 194 (K.B. 1603) .................................................. 17, 18, 19 iv Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557 (1969) ............. 21, 22 State v. Frizzelle, 89 S.E.2d 725 (N.C. 1955) ...... 26, 27 State v. Hewitt, 31 S.E.2d 257 (S.C. 1944) ............... 28 State v. Pugliese, 422 A.2d 1319 (N.H. 1980) ........... 27 United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. 400 (2012) ......... 8, 12 United States v. United States Dist. Court E. Dist. Mich., 407 U.S. 297 (1972) ..................................... 19 Wilkes v. Wood, 98 Eng. Rep. 489 (C.P. 1763) .... 6, 7, 8 CONSTITUTIONAL PROVISIONS & RULES U.S. CONST. amend. III ............................................ 20 Sup. Ct. R. 37.3(a) ....................................................... 1 Sup. Ct. R. 37.6 ............................................................ 1 OTHER 4 WILLIAM BLACKSTONE, COMMENTARIES ON THE LAWS OF ENGLAND (Coleridge ed., 1825) ............................. 13, 14, 15, 25 SIR EDWARD COKE, THE THIRD PART OF THE INSTI- TUTES OF THE LAWS OF ENGLAND (4th ed. 1669) (1644) ....................................................................... 14 WILLIAM J. CUDDIHY, THE FOURTH AMENDMENT: ORIGINS AND ORIGINAL MEANING 602–1791 (2009) ..................................................... 3, 6, 9, 10, 11 William Cuddihy & B. Carmon Hardy, A Man’s House Was Not His Castle: Origins of the Fourth v Amendment to the United States Constitution, 37 WM. & MARY Q. 371 (1980) .................... 5, 6, 9, 10 Laura K. Donohue, The Original Fourth Amendment, 83 U. CHI. L. REV. 1181 (2016) ........ 8, 9 Richard A. Epstein, Entick v. Carrington and Boyd v. United States: Keeping the Fourth and Fifth Amendments on Track, 82 U. CHI. L. REV. 27 (2015) ....................................................................... 10 Robert A. Gross, Public and Private in the Third Amendment, 26 VAL. U.L. REV. 215 (1991) ...... 20, 21 1 SIR MATTHEW HALE, HISTORIA PLACITORUM CORONAE (Sollom Emlyn ed., 1736) ....................... 14 SAMUEL F. MILLER, LECTURES ON THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES (1893) .................................. 20 M. H. SMITH, THE WRITS OF ASSISTANCE CASE (1978) ....................................................................... 10 3 JOSEPH STORY, COMMENTARIES ON THE CONSTITU- TION OF THE UNITED STATES (1833) ........................ 21 Samuel D. Warren & Louis D. Brandeis, The Right to Privacy, 4 HARV. L. REV. 193 (1890)................... 22 3 JAMES WILSON, THE WORKS OF THE HONOURABLE JAMES WILSON (1804) ....................................... 15, 25 1 INTEREST OF AMICUS CURIAE1 The National Rifle Association Freedom Action Foundation (“Freedom Action Foundation”) is a public charity dedicated to provision of non-partisan Second Amendment education to all American citizens. The Freedom Action Foundation’s primary mission is to ensure that gun-owners are registered to vote and ed- ucated about issues that affect their fundamental rights. The Freedom Action Foundation has a strong interest in ensuring that this Court’s decision properly respects the fundamental role the sanctity of the home plays in safeguarding many of our constitu- tional rights, including not only the right against un- reasonable searches and seizures, but also the right to keep and bear arms in defense of oneself, one’s family, and one’s home. SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT Ryan Austin Collins was convicted in the circuit court of Albemarle County on charges related to his dealings with a stolen motorcycle. Collins’s arrest and prosecution stemmed from a search of the motorcycle in question, while it was parked in his yard, in a par- tially enclosed structure a few feet from his house. 1 Pursuant to SUP. CT. R. 37.3(a), amicus certifies that all parties have given written consent to the filing of this brief. Pur- suant to SUP. CT. R. 37.6, amicus certifies that no counsel for any party authored this brief in whole or in part, no party or party’s counsel made a monetary contribution to fund its preparation or submission, and no person other than amicus, its members, or its counsel made such a monetary contribution. 2 Collins sought to suppress the evidence yielded by that search on the grounds that it had been obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment, in a warrant- less search of the curtilage around his home. The Su- preme Court of Virginia rejected that argument, hold- ing that the “warrantless search of the motorcycle was justified under the automobile exception to the war- rant requirement of the Fourth Amendment,” not- withstanding the fact that the “automobile” was parked within the curtilage of Collins’s home. Collins v. Commonwealth, S.E.2d 611, 617 (Va. 2016). 1. The Virginia Supreme Court’s holding en- croaches upon one of the central liberties that the Fourth Amendment was meant to protect: the sanc- tity of the home. The home is the sphere where a per- son’s interests in property and privacy coincide, and it is therefore also the sphere in which that person has the strongest right to be secure against unwarranted search and seizure. Pre-revolutionary caselaw in Eng- land and the Colonies reveals widespread antagonism against certain investigative techniques employed by the Crown’s agents. That antagonism fueled efforts to ensure that the newly formed American government would not have the power to violate “the sanctity of a man’s home and the privacies of life.” Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616, 630 (1886). Drawing upon the adage, ancient even then, that a man’s house is his castle, the ratifiers of the Fourth Amendment sought to ensure that the home