possessory interest

In January 1964, fourteen-year-old Pamela Mason disappeared from her home in Manchester, New Hampshire, during a heavy snowstorm after receiving a telephone call about a babysitting job. Her body was discovered eight days later beside a major highway, prompting a massive police investigation. On January 28, officers visited Edward Coolidge at his home after learning he had been absent on the night of the disappearance. Coolidge produced three guns for inspection and agreed to take a lie-detector test. On February 2, while Coolidge was at the police station undergoing the test, two plainclothes officers arrived at his house and spoke with his wife. Mrs. Coolidge provided four guns belonging to her husband and some clothing she believed he might have worn on the night in question. Coolidge was held overnight on an unrelated charge but released the next day. Over the following two and a half weeks, the State accumulated evidence implicating Coolidge. On February 19, the results of the investigation were presented at a meeting between the police officers working on the case and the State Attorney General, who had personally taken charge of all police activities relating to the murder, and was later to serve as chief prosecutor at the trial. Coolidge was arrested at his home that day. His 1951 Pontiac automobile parked in the driveway was seized and towed to the police station two and a half hours later. The Pontiac was searched and vacuumed on February 21, again in January 1965, and a third time in April 1965. At Coolidge's subsequent jury trial for murder, vacuum sweepings from the car were introduced into evidence. One of the guns taken from the home was also introduced. Vacuum sweepings from the clothing were introduced into evidence. The New Hampshire Supreme Court affirmed the conviction after upholding the admissibility of the evidence, and the United States Supreme Court granted certiorari.

CompuServe Incorporated operates one of the major national commercial online computer services through a proprietary nationwide computer network that provides subscribers with access to its content and a link to the Internet for exchanging electronic mail. Defendants Cyber Promotions, Inc. and its president Sanford Wallace are in the business of sending unsolicited e-mail advertisements on behalf of themselves and their clients to hundreds of thousands of Internet users, many of whom are CompuServe subscribers. Over the past several months, CompuServe received many complaints from subscribers threatening to discontinue their subscriptions unless the company prohibited electronic mass mailers from using its equipment. In or around October 1995, CompuServe employee Jon Schmidt specifically told Sanford Wallace that he was prohibited from using CompuServe's equipment to send junk e-mail messages. CompuServe later posted an online policy statement declaring that it does not permit its facilities to be used by unauthorized parties to process and store unsolicited e-mail. Despite the notification, defendants sent an increasing volume of e-mail solicitations to CompuServe subscribers. CompuServe attempted to block the messages with software programs, but defendants modified their equipment and messages to circumvent the screening by falsifying the point-of-origin information in the headers, removing sender information, and configuring their servers to conceal their true domain name. CompuServe submitted affidavits from software developer Michael Mangino on the burden to its equipment, customer service manager Patrick Hole on receiving approximately 9,970 e-mail complaints in November 1996, and others documenting the evasion tactics. On October 24, 1996, the court issued a temporary restraining order, and following a hearing on December 15, 1996, the court considered CompuServe's application for a preliminary injunction to extend the order and enjoin defendants from sending any unsolicited advertisements to CompuServe subscribers.

Petitioners were convicted of armed robbery in the Circuit Court of Kankakee County, Illinois, after a trial in which the prosecution introduced a sawed-off rifle and rifle shells seized by police from an automobile in which the petitioners had been passengers. Neither petitioner owned the automobile, and neither asserted ownership of the rifle or the shells. The Illinois Appellate Court affirmed the convictions after upholding the denial of a motion to suppress, and the Illinois Supreme Court denied leave to appeal. The events began when a police officer on routine patrol received a radio call reporting a robbery of a clothing store in Bourbonnais, Illinois, and describing the getaway car. The officer spotted a vehicle he believed matched the description, followed it until backup arrived, and then stopped the car. The occupants, consisting of the petitioners and two female companions with the owner driving, were ordered out of the vehicle. After the occupants exited, officers searched the interior of the car and discovered a box of rifle shells inside the locked glove compartment along with a sawed-off rifle beneath the front passenger seat. The officers then took the petitioners to the station and placed them under arrest. Before trial the petitioners moved to suppress the rifle and shells, conceding they did not own the automobile and were merely passengers while also declining to claim ownership of the seized items. The prosecutor challenged the petitioners' standing to object to the search on the ground that neither the car nor the evidence belonged to them. The trial court agreed and denied the motion to suppress without reaching the question of probable cause. The Supreme Court of the United States granted certiorari to address the standing issue because of its importance to the administration of criminal justice.