Page:State v. Brown.pdf/10

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Ark.]
State v. Brown
Cite as 356 Ark. 460 (2004)
469


was particularly well-developed in the rough-and-ready culture of the frontier, and no less pronounced in the Arkansas Territory. In our 1836 Constitution, the people of our newly admitted state expressed this principle succinctly in the following language:

§ 9. That the people shall be secure in their persons, houses, papers and possessions from unreasonable searches and seizures, and that general warrants, whereby any officer may be commanded to search suspected places without evidence of the fact committed, or to seize any person or persons not named whose offenses are not particularly described and supported by evidence, are dangerous to liberty, and shall not be granted.

Id. (emphasis added).

347 Ark. at 792, 67 S.W.3d at 585. Our 1864 Constitution had the same provision. It was with our 1868 Constitution that the people adopted language substantially identical to the present constitutional provision.

[7] This court emphasized the home dweller's right to privacy at nighttime in Fouse v. State, 337 Ark. 13, 989 S.W.2d 146 (1999). In Fouse, we said: "The privacy of citizens in their homes, secure from nighttime intrusions, is a right of vast importance as attested not only by our Rules [of Criminal Procedure], but also by our state and federal constitutions." 337 Ark. at 23, 989 S.W.2d at 150-51 (quoting Garner v. State, 307 Ark. 353, 358-59, 820 S.W.2d 446, 449-50 (1991)).

[8] We proceeded in the same vein when we imposed greater protection for persons in their bedrooms against unreasonable government interference in Jegley v. Picado, supra, and struck down the state's sodomy statute as unconstitutional when applied to consenting adults in their homes. In Picado, we held that the right to privacy implicit in the Arkansas Constitution is a fundamental right which requires a compelling state interest to override it. This rich tradition of protecting the privacy of our citizens in their homes justified our deviating from federal common law in Picado with respect to constitutional protection in our homes. Indeed, the legal principle that a person's home is a zone of privacy is as sacrosanct as any right or principle under our state constitution and case law. See Jegley v. Picado, supra; Griffin v. State, supra. The same analysis applies to the instant case. Arkansas has clearly