Opinion ID: 852827
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Fourth Amendment Doctrine

Text: Searches of garbage are generally permissible under the Fourth Amendment to the Federal Constitution. Since Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967), the reasonableness of a search under the Fourth Amendment has turned on whether the subject of the search has an expectation of privacy and if so whether that subjective expectation is reasonable judged by the objective criterion of the views of society as a whole. Id. at 361, 88 S.Ct. 507 (Harlan, J., concurring). In California v. Greenwood, 486 U.S. 35, 39, 108 S.Ct. 1625, 100 L.Ed.2d 30 (1988), the United States Supreme Court upheld the warrantless search of the defendant's garbage left at the curb for pickup. The Court reasoned that because the garbage was easily accessible to the public, the defendant did not have a reasonable expectation of its privacy. Federal courts have also upheld the warrantless search of garbage located on a resident's private property, focusing on the objective reasonableness of an expectation of privacy in the garbage rather than its location. Thus, in United States v. Kramer, 711 F.2d 789, 797 (7th Cir.1983), a warrantless search of the defendant's garbage was upheld where the garbage was located inside a low fence enclosing the defendant's yard. The court reasoned that the garbage had been abandoned and exposed to the public and the officers who seized the garbage did not threaten the peace and quiet of the defendant's home or interfere with his trash disposal routine. In United States v. Hedrick, 922 F.2d 396 (7th Cir.1991), the court sustained the search of trash located in the defendant's driveway eighteen feet from the sidewalk. The court took the view that it was common knowledge that members of the public often sort though others' garbage. As a result, an expectation of privacy may be objectively unreasonable because of the common practice of scavengers, snoops, and other members of the public in sorting through garbage. In other words, garbage placed where it is not only accessible to the public but likely to be viewed by the public is `knowingly exposed' to the public for Fourth Amendment purposes. Id. at 400. A majority of states follow federal doctrine and hold that their state constitutions permit a warrantless search of trash that has been left out for collection based on a lack of a reasonable expectation of privacy. [1] As the Supreme Court of Maryland explained, the law that has emerged since Greenwood is essentially the same as it was before that case was decided, although, as a general rule, it is based less on the property concept of abandonment than on the conclusion that, by depositing the trash in a place accessible to the public, for collection, the depositor has relinquished any reasonable expectation of privacy. State v. Sampson, 362 Md. 438, 765 A.2d 629, 634 (2001). Some states have rejected this view and have found trash searches violative of either the Fourth Amendment or their state constitutions. Most states reaching this conclusion have based it, contrary to Greenwood, on the view that a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy in garbage placed out for collection. [2] Recognizing that Greenwood forecloses any claim under the Fourth Amendment, the Litchfields do not challenge the searches of their trash under the Federal Constitution, but ask us to exclude the evidence as the product of a search and seizure in violation of the Indiana Constitution.