United States v. Benjamin Hitchcock

Hitchcock appeals his conviction by a jury of six counts of presenting fraudulent income tax refund claims to the Internal Revenue Service. He was already serving a life term for murder in the Arizona State Prison when he committed these tax offenses for which he received six concurrent five year sentences to run consecutively to his life sentence. We affirm.

Appellant’s Arizona prison cell was searched without a warrant and documentary evidence was found which was received by the court over appellant’s motion to suppress. He contends that his Fourth Amendment right was violated by the warrantless search and seizure in his prison cell. We disagree.

In Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 , 88 S.Ct. 507 , 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967), the Supreme Court enunciated a new standard for determining the limitations of the Fourth Amendment. Until now, this court has not been faced with the problem of applying this new test to searches involving prison inmates. The protection of the Fourth Amendment no longer depends upon “constitutionally protected” places. Instead, we must consider “first that a person have exhibited an actual (subjective) expectation of privacy and second, that the…