Case Title: Ex parte Corey Beantee Melton. PETITION FOR WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS (In re: Corey Beantee Melton v. State of Alabama) (Shelby Circuit Court: CC-06-1139; Criminal Appeals : CR-08-1767). Writ Denied. No Opinion.

Citation: 

Docket Number: 1100327

State: alabama

Court: Alabama Supreme Court

Date: 2011-03-11T00:00:00Z

Document:
RELEASED.
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SUPREME COURT OF ALABAMA
OCTOBER TERM, 2010-2011
1100327

Bx parte Corey Beantee Melton

 

PETITION FOR WRIT OF CERTIORARI
10 THE COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS

(tm xe: Corey Beantee Melton
ve
State of Alabama)

(Shelby Circuit Court, CC-06-1139;
Court of Criminal Appeals, CR-08-1767)

WOODALL, Justice.
WRIT DENIED, NO OPINION
Cobb, C.J., and Stuart, Bolin, Parker, and Shaw, JJ.,

Murdock, J., concurs specially

Main and Wise, JJ., recuse themselves.*

*gustice Main and Justice Wise were members of the Court of
Criminal Appeale when that court considered this case.
1100327
MURDOCK, Justice (concurring specially).

I concur in denying the petition for the writ of certiorari
in this case. The sole question raised in the petition to this
Court is whether the holding of the Court of Criminal Appeals in
its opinion in this case conflicts with the holding of the
United States Supreme Court in Walter v, United States, 447 U.S.
649 (1980). The facts of the two cases and, consequently, the
holdings of the two courts are sufficiently different that those
holdings do not conflict with one another. In Walter, there was
no dispute that the government clearly exceeded the scope of the
search actually conducted by a third party. Likewise, in the
present case, there is little dispute that the government
exceeded the scope of the search actually conducted by a third
party. In Walter, however, there was no dispute but that the
government exceeded the scope of any search that had been
authorized by the defendant. The same cannot be said here.

More specifically, the petition focuses on evidence
indicating that employees of Best Buy electronics retail stores
who were working on customers’ computers were restricted by
their employer from opening computer files they suspected of
containing illegal content. The petition does not address, nor
assert a conflict or an issue of first impression with respect
to, whether Corey Beantee Melton knew or reasonably should have

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1100327
known that employees of Best Buy would need to open certain
folders on his computer and thereby gave up any expectation of
privacy with respect to such folders. Compare Commonwealth v.
Sodomsky, 939 A.2d 363 (Pa. Super. Ct. 2007) (finding that a
defendant reasonably should have expected that a third party
hired to install a new DVD drive in his computer might use
videos already in his computer as a method to test the newly
installed equipment) .

Although I concur in denying the petition for the writ of
certiorari in this case, I do not wish to be understood as
agreeing in all respects with the analysis employed by the Court
of Criminal Appeals. Among other things, I am concerned about
the treatment of the inquiry, in the second half of Part II of
that court's opinion, into whether any expectation of privacy
Melton retained in his computer files was "an expectation that
society is prepared to consider reasonable," __ $0. 3d at _,
as somehow different from the inquiry in the first half of Part
II into "whether Melton had a reasonable expectation of privacy
in the files," ___ So, 3d at __. By definition, the two
inquiries are the same. See United States v, Jacobsen, 466 U.S.
109, 113 (1983) ("A ‘search' occurs when an expectation of
privacy that society is prepared to consider reasonable is

infringed.)