Global Courant
A Virginia homeowner is suing gamekeepers for trespassing on his property and stealing his camera without a warrant.
“It’s almost like we have a situation where they think their power is limitless,” Josh Highlander said. “And I just don’t feel like that’s right.”
Josh Highlander is suing the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources alleging that gamekeepers broke into his property without a warrant and stole his camera. (Courtesy of the Institute of Justice)
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Highlander’s 30-acre property in New Kent County, Virginia, is ringed with no trespassing grounds. On April 8, the first day of turkey hunting season, his wife and 6-year-old son were playing basketball when the ball rolled to the edge of the woods. When they went to pick it up, they saw someone dressed in full camouflage walking among the trees. His wife rushed their son in to get Highlander.
“My wife has this kind of panic in her eyes,” he recalls. But when he went out to search the property, thinking it might be a hunter, he couldn’t find anyone. He later realized that one of his cameras had disappeared about 500 feet from his home.
When Highlander reported the theft, the sheriff’s department told him that the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources (DWR) had taken the camera and would contact Highlander, said Attorney Joseph Gay of the Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm.
More than two months later, Highlander said he had not received any information from DWR.
A DWR spokesman declined to answer questions when contacted by Fox News, citing “pending lawsuits.”
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Highlander believes DWR is searching its cameras for evidence of hunting violations. Earlier, on April 8, Highlander’s brother was subpoenaed for “hunting carrion” in another county. Agents claimed to have found seeds in the field where he hunted turkey and determined it was bait, but Highlander’s brother is contesting the ticket, lawyers said.
“The basic principle here is that if we as ordinary people can’t sneak into someone’s country and steal their camera, then government agents shouldn’t either,” Gay said. “Not without a warrant.”
Highlander’s lawsuit against DWR, filed earlier this month, challenges a nearly 100-year-old Supreme Court ruling that Fourth Amendment protections against searches and seizures do not apply to open fields, even if they are surrounded by fences or prohibited access. A few states have extended Fourth Amendment protections to private land beyond a home, but Virginia is not among them.
“Part of what this case aims to do is to establish the principle that no trespassing signs should also apply to government agents,” Gay said.
Josh Highlander stands in the woods around his home in Virginia. (Courtesy of the Institute of Justice)
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The Institute for Justice litigates similar cases in other states. Two Hunting Clubs in Pennsylvania sued the state after saying a conservationist repeatedly entered their property to spy on and harass club members. A man from Tennessee says wildlife agents installed a security camera on his property without his knowledge. And a Connecticut couple says the state energy department a camera attached to a bear to guard their 117-acre wooded property.
Highlander’s case is different because instead of secretly planting a camera, officers brought his own camera, Gay said.
“We see that as a completely separate violation of the constitution and one that I think has been clearly established as a violation of the constitution in jurisprudence across the country,” he said.
The lawsuit seeks $1 in damages from the three conservation police officers accused of trespassing on his property, reimbursement of Highlander’s “expenses and expenses”, an order for DWR to return his camera and destroy any footage captured, and a injunction to permanently ban conservationists from searching Highlander property without a warrant or his permission to proceed.
Josh Highlander says his 6-year-old son has been afraid of the backyard ever since he saw a person walking through the woods in full camouflage. (Courtesy of the Institute of Justice)
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“I don’t care about money,” Highlander said. “I care about the principle and it’s not happening to anyone else.”
Click here to hear more from Highlander and Gay.
Hannah Ray Lambert is an associate producer/writer at Fox News Digital Originals.
