Gambling

The petitioner was convicted in the District Court for the Southern District of California. He faced an eight-count indictment charging him with transmitting wagering information by telephone from Los Angeles to Miami and Boston in violation of a federal statute. At trial the Government was permitted, over the petitioner's objection, to introduce evidence of the petitioner's end of telephone conversations. FBI agents had attached an electronic listening and recording device to the outside of the public telephone booth from which he had placed his calls. The Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction. It rejected the contention that the recordings had been obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment because there was no physical entrance into the area occupied by the petitioner. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to consider the constitutional questions thus presented. Based upon previous visual observations of the petitioner, the agents correctly predicted he would use the booth for several minutes at approximately the same time each morning. The petitioner was subjected to electronic surveillance only during this predetermined period. Six recordings, averaging some three minutes each, were obtained and admitted in evidence. They preserved the petitioner's end of conversations concerning placing bets and receiving wagering information. On the single occasion when the statements of another person were inadvertently intercepted, the agents refrained from listening to them. The telephone booth was made partly of glass. The petitioner was as visible after he entered it as he would have been if he had remained outside. The agents confined their surveillance to the brief periods during which he used the booth and took great care to overhear only the petitioner's conversations.

In March 1992, Alfonso Lopez, Jr., a twelfth-grade student at Edison High School in San Antonio, Texas, arrived at school carrying a concealed .38-caliber handgun and five bullets. Acting on an anonymous tip, school authorities confronted Lopez, who admitted possessing the weapon. Local police arrested him and charged him under Texas law with firearm possession on school premises. The following day, state charges were dismissed after federal agents charged Lopez with violating the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990. A federal grand jury indicted him on one count of knowing possession of a firearm at a school zone. Lopez moved to dismiss the indictment, arguing that the statute exceeded Congress's power to legislate control over public schools. The district court denied the motion, concluding that the statute was a constitutional exercise of Congress's power to regulate activities affecting commerce because the business of schools affects interstate commerce. After a bench trial, the court found Lopez guilty and sentenced him to six months' imprisonment and two years of supervised release. Lopez appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which reversed the conviction, holding that the statute was beyond Congress's power under the Commerce Clause. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to review the case.

On October 31, 1963, Cleveland police detective Martin McFadden, a 39-year veteran assigned to downtown Cleveland for 30 years, observed John W. Terry and Richard Chilton standing on the corner of Huron Road and Euclid Avenue. McFadden took up a post of observation 300 to 400 feet away. He watched as the two men walked back and forth along Huron Road, pausing repeatedly to look in the window of a store before conferring with each other. This pattern repeated roughly a dozen times over ten to twelve minutes. A third man, Katz, joined them briefly before departing, after which Terry and Chilton followed the same path. By this time McFadden had become thoroughly suspicious that the men were casing the store for a robbery and feared they might be armed. McFadden approached the three men in front of Zucker's store, identified himself as a police officer, and asked their names. When they mumbled responses, he grabbed Terry, spun him around, patted down the outer clothing of his overcoat, and felt a pistol in the left breast pocket. He removed a .38-caliber revolver from Terry's pocket and ordered the men into the store, where he similarly frisked Chilton and discovered another revolver while finding no weapons on Katz. Terry and Chilton were arrested and charged with carrying concealed weapons. Prior to trial they moved to suppress the revolvers as the product of an unlawful search. The trial court denied the motion after hearing McFadden's testimony, finding that the officer had reasonable cause to believe the defendants were acting suspiciously and that the frisk was necessary for his protection. After the denial, Terry and Chilton waived jury trial, were convicted, and sentenced to one to three years in the penitentiary. The Ohio Court of Appeals affirmed, the Supreme Court of Ohio dismissed the appeal, and the United States Supreme Court granted certiorari.

Anthony Palazzolo, a lifelong resident of Westerly, Rhode Island, formed Shore Gardens, Inc. (SGI) with associates in 1959 to purchase three undeveloped adjoining parcels along Atlantic Avenue bordering Winnapaug Pond to the north and the beach to the south. SGI subdivided the property into 80 lots in the 1960s and developed most into single-family homes, but left the petitioner's 20-acre parcel undeveloped. Most of the property consists of salt marsh subject to tidal flooding requiring substantial fill for structures. In 1971, Rhode Island created the Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC) to regulate coastal development. In 1978, the CRMC promulgated regulations designating much of the property as protected coastal wetlands where filling is prohibited without a special exception. That same year SGI's corporate charter was revoked for unpaid taxes, transferring title to Palazzolo as sole shareholder. In 1983, Palazzolo applied to the CRMC to construct a bulkhead and fill the entire wetlands for a beach club, but the application was denied as vague and inadequate with significant environmental impacts. In 1985, he submitted a more specific proposal to fill 11 acres for a beach club including parking for 50 cars with trailers, dumpsters, port-a-johns, picnic tables, and barbecue pits, which the CRMC also rejected for failing to serve a compelling public purpose. Palazzolo filed an inverse condemnation action in Rhode Island Superior Court seeking $3,150,000 in damages based on the value of a 74-lot residential subdivision, alleging the regulations deprived him of all economically beneficial use. After a bench trial, the Superior Court ruled against him, finding the parcel retained $200,000 in development value on an upland portion. The Rhode Island Supreme Court affirmed on multiple grounds, including lack of ripeness and that Palazzolo lacked standing to challenge pre-acquisition regulations. The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari to review the Rhode Island Supreme Court's decision.