## Facts

- Law enforcement conducted controlled drug buys using confidential informants equipped with body-wire devices that transmitted and recorded conversations with suspects.
- In Goetz’s case, officers wired an informant and sent her to Goetz’s residence to purchase methamphetamine; officers monitored and recorded the conversation without obtaining a warrant.
- In Hamper’s case, officers similarly wired an informant to record alleged marijuana sales in a vehicle and at Hamper’s home; officers again did not obtain a warrant.
- In both cases, the defendants did not know of and did not consent to the electronic monitoring and recording.
- The recordings were intended to be used as key evidence at trial.
- Each defendant moved to suppress the recordings under the Montana Constitution’s privacy and search-and-seizure provisions; the trial courts denied suppression.
- Each defendant entered a conditional guilty plea preserving the right to appeal the suppression ruling; the appeals were consolidated.

## Issues

1. Whether warrantless electronic monitoring and recording of a defendant’s private, one-on-one, in-person conversation with a confidential informant constitutes a “search” under Article II, §§ 10 and 11 of the Montana Constitution.
2. Whether an informant’s consent to wear a body wire makes such monitoring and recording reasonable under the Montana Constitution absent a warrant or an established exception.
3. Whether the State may use a standard lower than probable cause (e.g., reasonable suspicion) to justify warrantless electronic monitoring of private conversations in homes or similar private settings.

## Decision

- The Montana Supreme Court reversed the trial courts’ denials of the motions to suppress and remanded for further proceedings.
- The Court held that warrantless electronic monitoring and recording of the defendants’ private, face-to-face conversations with informants violated Article II, §§ 10 and 11 of the Montana Constitution.
- The Court determined the body-wire monitoring and recording constituted a search and the State showed neither a warrant nor a valid exception to the warrant requirement.
- The Court rejected the argument that the informant’s consent alone eliminated the need for a warrant.
- The Court declined to adopt a lesser standard than probable cause for such electronic surveillance, particularly where conversations occurred in homes or other private locations.

## Legal Principles

- Montana’s Constitution provides independent and broader privacy protection than the federal Fourth Amendment, and state constitutional analysis is not controlled by federal one-party-consent doctrine.
- A person has a protected privacy interest in a private, in-person, one-on-one conversation occurring in nonpublic settings such as a home or vehicle.
- Government use of electronic technology to surreptitiously monitor and record such a conversation is a “search” under Article II, §§ 10 and 11.
- Warrantless searches are per se unreasonable unless the State proves a recognized exception; informant consent does not, by itself, waive the nonconsenting speaker’s state constitutional rights.
- The heightened privacy interests associated with homes weigh strongly against authorizing warrantless electronic monitoring on less than probable cause.

## Conclusion

The court held that police may not, without a warrant or a proven exception, electronically monitor and record private face-to-face conversations in homes or similar private settings based solely on an informant’s consent, and it required suppression of the resulting recordings.


State v. Goetz, 191 P.3d 489 (Mont. 2008)