Waller v. Georgia - Significance, Seven Days' Suppression For Two-and-a-half Hours Of Evidence

Waller v. Georgia - Further Readings

Waller v. Georgia - Significance

Waller v. Georgia - Seven Days' Suppression For Two-and-a-half Hours Of Evidence

In the latter half of 1981, Georgia police began tapping the phones of individuals they suspected of involvement in an illegal lottery operation. This was long before that state had a legal, state-run lottery, and the particular scheme operated by the individuals in this case involved gambling on the volume of stocks and bonds traded on the New York Stock Exchange. In early January of 1982, state …

Waller v. Georgia - The Presumption Of Openness

A unanimous Court reversed the ruling of the lower court. Justice Powell, who delivered the opinion, first identified a series of tests for justifying closure of a suppression hearing. The tests, derived from the Sixth Amendment and the Court's Press-Enterprise Co. v. Superior Court of California ruling earlier in the 1984 term, included the following: the party seeking to close the hearing must a…

Waller v. Georgia - Impact

On its own, the impact of Waller v. Georgia was slight. An informal review of Supreme Court cases over a period of nearly 15 years following the Court's 1984 decision, for instance, found only five cases that referred to Waller specifically. Considered as part of a larger trend, however, the results of Waller were powerful indeed. This trend relates at least as much to the First Amendment as to th…

Waller v. Georgia - Surveillance

Electronic surveillance includes the secret monitoring of people and places while using devices such as cameras, tape recorders, video recorders, and wiretaps. State and federal investigators use this equipment to gather evidence on suspected criminals or criminal activity. The three main types of electronic surveillance are wiretapping, bugging, and videotaping. Wiretaps intercept telephone calls…