Opinion ID: 195160
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Infante's Privacy Interest in the Briefcase

Text: 11 The district court found that Infante had no privacy interest in the briefcase and concluded that the lack of such an interest provided a sufficient basis to deny the suppression motion. The district court found that Infante had left the unlocked briefcase in the trunk of the Mazda for a period of some days, even when he was not a passenger, and that he allowed de la Paz and others to place possessions of their own inside it. The district court found that the briefcase was not under the control of the defendant and that Infante had no Fourth Amendment privacy rights that could have been violated by its search. 12 While the district court cited no authority, the best analogy we could find for the district court's reasoning is California v. Greenwood, 486 U.S. 35, 108 S.Ct. 1625, 100 L.Ed.2d 30 (1988). There, the police searched without a warrant the contents of garbage bags left at the curb outside the defendants' home. The Court held that the defendants exposed their garbage to the public sufficiently to defeat their claim to Fourth Amendment protection. Id. at 40, 108 S.Ct. at 1628. It was common knowledge, said the Court, that garbage bags left for pick up are readily accessible to animals, children, scavengers, snoops, and other members of the public. Id. (footnotes omitted). The defendants were considered to have left their refuse in an area particularly suited for public inspection and ... consumption, for the express purpose of having strangers take it. Id. at 40-41, 108 S.Ct. at 1629 (internal quotation omitted). 13 The facts in this case, however, are clearly distinguishable from Greenwood. Storing items inside a closed briefcase inside a locked car trunk did not reveal a willingness on the part of Infante to expose such items to the public. Moreover, nothing in the circumstances indicated that Infante had abandoned the briefcase, relinquished authority over it, or left it open to public inspection and consumption. De la Paz's identification of the briefcase as belonging to Infante indicated that, among his friends, the case was still believed to belong to Infante. While there is evidence that Infante's confederates felt entitled to place items of their own within it, he did nothing to indicate its availability to the public generally nor did his actions betray an intention to forego an owner's normal right to exclude those he wished to exclude. By the time of the search, Infante himself was once more a passenger in the car carrying his briefcase. 14 We think it is clear, therefore, that Infante did not repudiate his privacy interest in the briefcase by placing it in the trunk of the Mazda. While he indicated a willingness to share access with a few friends, he in no way opened the case to public access. We therefore hold that Infante had a privacy interest in the briefcase and that the district court's finding to the contrary was in error.