Title: State v. Howard/Dawson
Citation: N/A
Docket Number: S53429
State: Oregon
Issuer: Oregon Supreme Court
Date: April 26, 2007

FILED: April 26, 2007
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF OREGON
STATE OF OREGON,
Respondent on Review,
v.
SHARON DAWN HOWARD,
Petitioner on Review.
(CC 01122854;  CA A121011 (Control))
STATE OF OREGON,
Respondent on Review,
v.
GARY DEAN DAWSON,
Petitioner on Review.
(CC 01122853; CA A121012; SC S53429)
(Cases Consolidated)
On review from the Court of Appeals.*
Argued and submitted November 7, 2006.
Patrick M. Ebbett, of Chilton, Ebbett &amp; Rohr, LLC, Portland, argued the cause and filed
the briefs for petitioners on review.
Douglas F. Zier, Assistant Attorney General, Salem, argued the cause and filed the brief
for respondent on review.  With him on the brief were Hardy Myers, Attorney General, and Mary
H. Williams, Solicitor General.
Before De Muniz, Chief Justice, and Carson, Gillette, Durham, Balmer, Kistler, and
Walters, Justices.**
KISTLER, J.
The decision of the Court of Appeals and the judgment of the circuit court are
affirmed.
*Appeal from Linn County Circuit Court, Carol R. Bispham, Judge. 204 Or App 438, 129 P3d 792 (2006).
**Carson, J., retired December 31, 2006, and did not participate in the decision of
this case.  Linder, J., did not participate in the consideration or decision of this case.
KISTLER, J.
The question in this case is whether Article I, section 9, of the Oregon
Constitution prohibits the police from engaging in a warrantless search of garbage that a
sanitation company had picked up in the regular course of business and turned over to the
police.  The Court of Appeals held that, because defendants did not retain a possessory or
privacy interest in the garbage once the sanitation company picked it up, the trial court
correctly denied defendants' motion to suppress the evidence resulting from the search. 
State v. Howard/Dawson, 204 Or App 438, 129 P3d 792 (2006).  We allowed review and
now affirm the Court of Appeals decision and the trial court's judgment.
The relevant facts are straightforward.  The police learned that Sharon
Howard had made multiple purchases of iodine -- a chemical used to manufacture
methamphetamine.  Based on that information, a police officer spoke with the sanitation
company that regularly picked up Howard's garbage from her home and asked whether
the company would turn Howard's garbage over to him after the company had collected it. 
The company agreed to do so and, on two different occasions, gave the garbage that it had
picked up on the regularly scheduled collection day to the police officer.  Based on
information that the officer gleaned from that garbage, the police applied for and received
a warrant to search Howard's home.  During that search, the police uncovered additional
evidence of drug manufacturing and use.
The state charged Howard and Gary Dawson, a resident of Howard's home,
with manufacturing and possessing methamphetamine and also with frequenting a place
where controlled substances are used.  Before trial, defendants moved to suppress the
evidence that the police had obtained both from the garbage and from the resulting search
of Howard's home.  At the hearing on that motion, defendants testified that they had not
expected that the police would look through their garbage.  They recognized, however,
that they lost control over their garbage once the sanitation company picked it up.  As
Dawson testified, "once the trash leaves your house * * * you have no control over
anything the trash man does to your garbage."
Based on that and other evidence, the trial court found that, when
defendants left their garbage for the sanitation company to collect, "there [wa]s an intent
to give up ownership."  That is, the trial court found that defendants relinquished their
ownership in the garbage once the sanitation company collected it.  The trial court
reasoned that, when the sanitation company later permitted the police to look through the
garbage, the police did not invade any constitutionally protected possessory or privacy
interest that defendants retained in the garbage.  The court denied defendants' motion to
suppress, and the case went to the jury, which found defendants guilty of the charged
offenses.
The Court of Appeals, sitting en banc, affirmed the trial court's judgment. 
Howard/Dawson, 204 Or App at 449.  The majority concluded that defendants had
relinquished their possessory interests in the garbage and, as a result, their privacy
interests as well.  Id. at 443-44.  In the majority's view, defendants had no basis to object
to the sanitation company's decision to permit the police to search the garbage, and the
subsequent search did not infringe any constitutionally protected interest that defendants
retained.  Id.  The dissent reached a different conclusion.  It reasoned that the police had
invaded a protected privacy interest because the officers' acts, "if engaged in wholly at the
discretion of the government, will significantly impair the people's freedom from
scrutiny."  Id. at 450 (Schuman, J., dissenting) (internal quotation marks omitted) (quoting
State v. Campbell, 306 Or 151, 171, 759 P2d 1040 (1988)).  We allowed review to
consider the state constitutional issue that divided the Court of Appeals. (1)
Article I, section 9, of the Oregon Constitution provides in part:  "No law
shall violate the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and
effects, against unreasonable search, or seizure."  As its terms imply, Article I, section 9,
applies only when government officials engage in a "search" or a "seizure."  State v.
Owens, 302 Or 196, 205-06, 729 P2d 524 (1986).  "A 'search' occurs when a person's
privacy interests are invaded," and a "'seizure' occurs when there is a significant
interference with a person's possessory or ownership interests in property."  Id. at 206-07. 
When, as in this case, the police act without a warrant and no exception to the warrant
requirement applies, the question whether the police have violated Article I, section 9,
reduces to whether the officers' acts invaded either a constitutionally protected possessory
or privacy interest.
We note, as an initial matter, that defendants do not argue on review that
they retained either an ownership or a possessory interest in the garbage once the
sanitation company picked it up. (2)  It follows that, if defendants had no ownership or
possessory interest in the garbage once the sanitation company collected it, the officers
did not seize the garbage in violation of defendants' Article I, section 9, rights; that is, the
officers did not interfere, significantly or otherwise, with defendants' ownership or
possessory interests.  See Owens, 302 Or at 207 (explaining that a seizure occurs when
government officials significantly interfere with a person's "possessory or ownership
interests in property").   Rather, the sanitation company lawfully possessed the property
once it collected it.  See Haslem v. Lockwood, 37 Conn 500 (1871) (citizen who raked
into piles horse manure abandoned on public thoroughfare lawfully possessed it as against
other citizens).  If any entity had a constitutionally protected possessory interest, it was
the sanitation company but that company voluntarily turned the property over to the
police.
Defendants focus on review solely on the question whether they retained a
protected privacy interest in the garbage, the invasion of which would give rise to a
"search."  See Owens, 302 Or at 206 (defining a search as an invasion of a protected
privacy interest).  On that issue, as we noted above, defendants do not contend that they
retained an ownership or possessory interest in the garbage once the sanitation company
picked it up.  Similarly, they have not identified any other subconstitutional right or
relationship that would prohibit the sanitation company from doing what it did here.  For
instance, defendants have not claimed that their contract with the sanitation company
limited what the company could do with the garbage once the company took possession
of it.
On this record, defendants retained no more right to control the disposition
of the garbage once they turned it over to the sanitation company than they would had
they abandoned it.  As this court consistently has recognized, a person retains no
constitutionally protected privacy interest in abandoned property.  See State v. Purvis, 249
Or 404, 410-11, 438 P2d 1002 (1968) (holding that, under Article I, section 9, a person
has no constitutionally protected privacy interest in abandoned property); State v. Crandall, 340 Or 645, 653, 136 P3d 30 (2006) (reaffirming Purvis).  Indeed, we do not
see a material distinction between the facts in this case and the facts in Purvis.
In Purvis, a police officer asked the hotel staff to keep the trash that they
collected from the defendant's hotel room separate and then to give that trash to the
officer.  249 Or at 405.  Looking through the trash that the staff had turned over to him,
the officer discovered evidence of the defendant's illegal drug use.  Id. at 406.  Although
the defendant in Purvis argued that the police had invaded his privacy rights in violation
of the state and federal constitutions, this court held otherwise.  The court began by
recognizing that the "[d]efendant's claim to privacy terminated with respect to items
discarded by him and which he impliedly authorized to be hauled away."  Id. at 410.  As
the court explained, "the objects which [the] defendant deposited in the ash trays and
waste baskets can be regarded as abandoned property," in which he retained no protected
privacy interest. (3)  Id. at 411.
In this case, when defendants turned the garbage over to the sanitation
company without any restriction on its disposition, they effectively abandoned that
property in the same way that the defendant in Purvis did.  Because the defendants in this
case retained no greater protected privacy interest in the garbage than the defendant in
Purvis did, the police did not violate defendants' Article I, section 9, rights when they
looked through it.
The dissenting opinion in the Court of Appeals, which defendants appear to
adopt, would have reached a different conclusion.  The dissenting opinion reasoned that,
under this court's decision in Campbell, the officers' acts invaded a constitutionally
protected privacy interest because those acts, "if engaged in wholly at the discretion of the
government, will significantly impair the people's freedom from scrutiny." 
Howard/Dawson, 204 Or App at 450 (Schuman, J., dissenting) (internal quotation marks
omitted) (quoting Campbell, 306 Or at 171).  As this court recognized in Campbell,
however, the freedom from scrutiny that Article I, section 9, protects turns in large part on
"social and legal norms of behavior."  Campbell, 306 Or at 170; cf. State v. Meredith, 337
Or 299, 306-07, 96 P3d 342 (2004) (explaining that freedom from scrutiny turns on the
applicable legal and factual context in which the government acts).
Here, the legal relationship between defendants and the sanitation company
effectively controls the question whether defendants retained a constitutionally protected
privacy interest in the garbage.  See State v. Cook, 332 Or 601, 607-08, 34 P3d 156
(2001) (recognizing that proposition).  To be sure, the privacy that Article I, section 9,
protects is not necessarily coextensive with property law.  Compare State v. Dixon/Digby,
307 Or 195, 211-12, 766 P2d 1015 (1988) (the presence of a trespass does not necessarily
mean that police officers have invaded a constitutionally protected privacy interest), with
Campbell, 306 Or at 169 (the absence of a trespass does not necessarily mean that the
police officers have not invaded a constitutionally protected privacy interest).  Rather, the
degree to which property law informs questions of privacy varies with the context in
which the challenged action occurs.  In this context, the court has recognized that, when a
person gives up all rights to control the disposition of property, that person also gives up
his or her privacy interest in the property in the same way that he or she would if the
property had been abandoned.  See Purvis, 249 Or at 410-11 (recognizing that
proposition).
Defendants advance an alternative argument.  They note that, as they
testified at the suppression hearing, they did not expect that the sanitation company would
look through their garbage or permit someone else to do so.  However, we need not
decide whether defendants' subjective expectations were reasonable because, as this court
has explained, "the privacy protected by Article I, section 9, is not the privacy that one
reasonably expects but the privacy to which one has a right."  Campbell, 306 Or at 164
(emphasis in original).  It follows that defendants' subjective expectations are not
necessarily dispositive to our analysis under Article I, section 9.  Indeed, the defendant in
Purvis may have expected that the hotel staff would dispose of his trash without
inspecting it or permitting the police to do so.  The court's holding in Purvis did not turn
on that expectation, however.  It turned instead on the proposition that, in effectively
abandoning his interests in the property, the defendant gave up any right to control its
disposition and, as a result, any protected privacy interest in it.  That holding applies with
equal force here.  The officer did not violate defendants' Article I, section 9, rights when
he examined the garbage that the sanitation company had collected from defendants and
turned over to him.
The decision of the Court of Appeals and the judgment of the circuit court
are affirmed.
1. Because the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution does not
prohibit the police from searching a person's garbage after the sanitation company has
collected it, California v. Greenwood, 486 US 35, 108 S Ct 1625, 100 L Ed 2d 30 (1988),
defendants have based their argument solely on Article I, section 9, of the Oregon
Constitution.
2. A person may have a right to possess property that he or she does not own. 
See Wisbey v. Nationwide Mut. Ins. Co., 264 Or 600, 603, 507 P2d 17 (1973)
(recognizing that the plaintiff lawfully could have possessed a car without owning it).  In
this case, the trial court found that defendants had relinquished their ownership interests
in the garbage, and defendants have not claimed that they retained any possessory interest
in the garbage.  
3. The court was careful to make clear in Purvis that the police could not have
entered the defendant's hotel room without a warrant or an exception to the warrant
requirement to look through his garbage.  See 249 Or at 411 (explaining that, although
entering the room would not violate any privacy interest that the defendant retained in the
trash, it would violate his right to privacy in the room).  Similarly, in this case, the
officers waited until the sanitation company had removed defendants' garbage from
Howard's property before examining it.