Opinion ID: 884427
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: The Waste-Heat Approach

Text: Using this approach, some courts have analogized heat to garbage left outside one's home. Since a warrant is not required to examine curbside garbage, these courts reason that, in the same way, no warrant is required to examine heat discarded from one's home. This approach finds its genesis in the case of California v. Greenwood (1988), 486 U.S. 35, 108 S.Ct. 1625, 100 L.Ed.2d 30, wherein law enforcement officers, lacking a warrant, searched the garbage left for collection outside the curtilage of a home. In Greenwood, the Laguna Beach Police Department received information that Greenwood might be engaged in narcotics trafficking. In conducting a surveillance of Greenwood's home, an officer asked the neighborhood trash collector to pick up the garbage bags that Greenwood left on the curb in front of his house and to deliver them to the officer without mixing their contents with garbage from other houses. The officer then searched through Greenwood's garbage and found items indicative of narcotics use. The officer used this information to obtain a warrant to search Greenwood's home where quantities of cocaine and hashish were found. Greenwood was arrested and subsequently posted bail. A few weeks later, another officer again searched Greenwood's garbage and found evidence of narcotics use. A search warrant was issued based on the information from the second garbage search. The police found more narcotics and evidence of narcotics trafficking in their search of Greenwood's home and Greenwood was again arrested. The Superior Court dismissed the charges against Greenwood based on prior case law holding that warrantless trash searches violated the Fourth Amendment and the California Constitution. The United States Supreme Court determined that the warrantless search of the garbage left outside Greenwood's home would violate the Fourth Amendment only if Greenwood manifested a subjective expectation of privacy in his garbage that society would accept as objectively reasonable. Greenwood, 486 U.S. at 39, 108 S.Ct. at 1628, 100 L.Ed.2d at 36 (citations omitted). The Court concluded that by leaving his garbage on a public street, readily accessible to animals, children, scavengers, snoops, and other members of the public, Greenwood defeated any claim he may have had to Fourth Amendment protection. Greenwood, 486 U.S. at 40-41, 108 S.Ct. at 1628-29, 100 L.Ed.2d at 36-37. Furthermore, because Greenwood deliberately placed his garbage at the curb for the express purpose of having a third party, the trash collector, take it, Greenwood could have no reasonable expectation of privacy in the inculpatory items that he discarded. Greenwood, 486 U.S. at 41, 108 S.Ct. at 1629, 100 L.Ed.2d at 37. Along these same lines, the United States District Court for the District of Hawaii concluded that the nonintrusive use of a thermal imaging device for the purpose of detecting waste heat did not amount to a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. U.S. v. Penny-Feeney (D.Hawaii 1991), 773 F.Supp. 220, 228, aff'd on other grounds sub nom. U.S. v. Feeney (9th Cir.1993), 984 F.2d 1053. In this case, the Kona Police Department received several tips from known and anonymous informants that Penny-Feeney had been growing marijuana at her residence for several years. To corroborate this information, officers flew over the residence in a helicopter equipped with a thermal imager. The thermal imaging scan revealed a significant amount of heat emanating from the garage on the property. Based on the information obtained from the informants and the thermal imager, a warrant was issued to search the residence. In the search, officers found marijuana plants, grow lights, an electric meter that had been altered to show a lower amount of electric usage, and books and papers showing drug transactions. The United States District Court determined that Penny-Feeney did not have a legitimate expectation of privacy in the waste heat since she voluntarily vented it outside the garage where it was exposed to the public and she in no way attempted to impede its escape or exercise dominion over it. Moreover, analogizing it to the garbage in Greenwood, the court determined that even if Penny-Feeney could demonstrate a subjective expectation of privacy in the waste heat, such an expectation would not be one that society would accept as objectively reasonable. Penny-Feeney, 773 F.Supp. at 226. In a similar fashion, the Seventh, Eighth and Eleventh Circuits all relied, at least in part, on Greenwood and compared the excess heat detected by thermal imaging scans to garbage. From this they concluded that the use of a thermal imager is not a search as contemplated by the Fourth Amendment. U.S. v. Myers (7th Cir.1995), 46 F.3d 668, cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 116 S.Ct. 213, 133 L.Ed.2d 144; U.S. v. Pinson (8th Cir.1994), 24 F.3d 1056, cert. denied, 513 U.S. 1057, 115 S.Ct. 664, 130 L.Ed.2d 598; U.S. v. Ford (11th Cir.1994), 34 F.3d 992. In one such case, Ford, agents of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, acting upon information that Ford was growing marijuana inside his mobile home, entered the property leased by Ford over a locked gate and traveled a quarter of a mile onto the property. They viewed the mobile home through a thermal imager and determined that it was emitting an inordinate amount of heat through its floor and walls. Based upon this information, the agents obtained a warrant to search the mobile home where they discovered a sophisticated hydroponic laboratory and over 400 marijuana plants. They also discovered that Ford had punched holes in the floor of the mobile home and installed a blower to vent the excess heat generated by grow lamps. Ford, 34 F.3d at 993. The court in Ford concluded that given Ford's affirmative conduct to expel excess heat from his mobile home, Ford did not seek to preserve the fact of that heat as private, thus he did not exhibit a subjective expectation of privacy in the heat emitted from his mobile home. Ford, 34 F.3d at 995. The court also stated that even if Ford had a subjective expectation of privacy in the heat escaping from his mobile home, it was not one that society would accept as objectively reasonable. Ford, 34 F.3d at 997. Citing Greenwood, the court in Ford stated that the heat that Ford intentionally vented from his mobile home was a waste byproduct of his marijuana cultivation and is analogous to the inculpatory items Greenwood discarded in his trash. Ford, 34 F.3d at 997. The problem with this approach is that it does not address the fact that waste heat, unlike garbage, can only be detected by means of a technologically advanced device. It is not readily accessible to animals, children, scavengers, snoops, and other members of the public, as was the garbage in Greenwood. Furthermore, since dissipation is an inevitable result of heat production, it does not require a deliberate act nor is it preventable in the same way that one can conceal incriminating garbage. The laws of thermodynamics dictate that no matter how much one insulates, heat will still escape. Moreover, the fact that one insulates to keep heat in indicates a subjective expectation of privacy.