## Facts

- Daniel Kean and Lucile Mae Kean, a married couple, were charged with sexual offenses involving two male juveniles, Alan and Steve, who were under sixteen when sexual contact began.
- The juveniles secretly recorded sexual activity in the Keans’ bedroom using a videocamera and tape taken without permission from a relative’s home.
- To create the recording, the juveniles twice broke into the Keans’ home without consent: first to conceal the camera in the bedroom, and later to retrieve it.
- The juveniles triggered the recording during a sexual encounter and later duplicated the recording.
- Steve’s mother learned of the tape, obtained it from her son, had its contents confirmed by another adult, retained it for weeks, and then voluntarily gave it to a police officer.
- Police, without obtaining a warrant, viewed the tape with the district attorney.
- The Keans moved to suppress the tape as the product of an unlawful search and seizure; the trial court denied suppression, admitted the tape, and a jury convicted both defendants.

## Issues

1. Whether the warrantless police viewing of a videotape depicting sexual activity in the defendants’ bedroom—created through private misconduct and later voluntarily delivered to police—violated the Fourth Amendment or Article I, § 8 of the Pennsylvania Constitution.
2. Whether the defendants retained a constitutionally protected privacy interest in surreptitiously captured bedroom images that required police to obtain a warrant before viewing the tape.

## Decision

- The Superior Court affirmed the judgments of sentence and upheld admission of the videotape.
- The court recognized that, under Article I, § 8, the defendants had a protected privacy interest in the intimate images recorded in their bedroom.
- The court nonetheless held that, on these facts, police did not act improperly by viewing the tape without a warrant.
- The court emphasized that the tape was created by private actors without police instigation or participation and was voluntarily surrendered to law enforcement by a private party.

## Legal Principles

- Constitutional search-and-seizure protections generally regulate government conduct; purely private wrongdoing, without police direction or participation, does not trigger exclusion under the Fourth Amendment or Article I, § 8.
- Article I, § 8 can recognize a privacy interest in intimate bedroom images even when the images were secretly recorded by third parties.
- When a private party voluntarily delivers an item to police, officers may inspect its contents without a warrant where their examination does not exceed what has been voluntarily exposed and police did not encourage the underlying private intrusion.
- Recognition of a privacy interest does not require suppression when the government’s role is limited to receiving and examining evidence voluntarily provided by a private party.

## Conclusion

The court held that although the defendants had a protected privacy interest in surreptitiously recorded bedroom images, the warrantless viewing of the tape by police was reasonable where the recording resulted from private conduct unconnected to law enforcement and the tape was voluntarily turned over to police; suppression was therefore properly denied and the convictions were affirmed.


Commonwealth v. Kean, 382 Pa. Super. 587, 556 A.2d 374 (Pa. Super. Ct. 1989)