Opinion ID: 417957
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Heading: legitimate expectations of privacy under the fourth amendment

Text: 9 The Fourth Amendment protects people from unreasonable government intrusions into their legitimate expectations of privacy. United States v. Chadwick, 433 U.S. 1, 7, 97 S.Ct. 2476, 2481, 53 L.Ed.2d 538 (1977). We begin our analysis, therefore, by determining Lyons' legitimate expectations regarding the sanctity of his room and, more specifically, of his closet. 10 Three principles guide our inquiry. First, the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351, 88 S.Ct. 507, 511, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967). Thus, the question we must answer is not whether the room and closet were somehow private spaces in the abstract, but whether Lyons had a reasonable expectation of privacy therein. Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. 128, 139-43, 99 S.Ct. 421, 428-430, 58 L.Ed.2d 387 (1978). Second, a privacy interest, in the constitutional lexicon, consists of a reasonable expectation that uninvited and unauthorized persons will not intrude into a particular area. One may freely admit guests of one's choosing--or be legally obliged to admit specific persons--without sacrificing one's right to expect that a space will remain secure against all others. Stoner v. California, 376 U.S. 483, 489-90, 84 S.Ct. 889, 893, 11 L.Ed.2d 856 (1964); Chapman v. United States, 365 U.S. 610, 616-17, 81 S.Ct. 776, 779-780, 5 L.Ed.2d 828 (1961). Thus, we must determine, not whether Lyons assumed that he alone had access to Room 209, but whether he reasonably believed that the room and the closet were not open to the world at large. Third, an expectation of privacy, strictly speaking, consists of a belief that uninvited people will not intrude in a particular way. Such vectorial expectations often expand and contract independently of one another. Thus, a person may renounce his assumption that he is immune from one kind of invasion while retaining his belief that he is protected from others; by exposing oneself to public view, for instance, one does not relinquish one's right not to be overheard. Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. at 352, 88 S.Ct. at 511. We must assess the legitimacy, therefore, not of Lyons' expectation that his room and closet were private for all purposes, but of his assumption that the contents of the closet would not be removed and rifled. 11 Had Lyons rented his room in the usual fashion, and had the police walked in uninvited, application of the foregoing principles to the instant case would be straightforward and simple. The Supreme Court long ago made clear that a guest in a hotel room is entitled to constitutional protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. Stoner v. California, 376 U.S. at 490, 84 S.Ct. at 893; accord Hoffa v. United States, 385 U.S. 293, 301, 87 S.Ct. 408, 413, 17 L.Ed.2d 374 (1966) (dicta). To be sure, the privacy to which such a hotel guest is entitled is not comparable in every respect to that of an owner or tenant of a house. The distinctive attributes of life in a hotel--the facts that the occupants share corridors, sidewalks, yards, and trees and that each room abuts several others--inevitably mute some of each guest's legitimate expectations. United States v. Agapito, 620 F.2d 324, 331-32 (2d Cir.1980) (quoting United States v. Jackson, 588 F.2d 1046, 1052 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 442 U.S. 941, 99 S.Ct. 2882, 61 L.Ed.2d 310 (1979)), cert. denied, 449 U.S. 834, 101 S.Ct. 107, 66 L.Ed.2d 40 (1980). But only those privacy interests affected by the  'open, public, and shared atmosphere' [of a hotel], together with the 'nearness' and transience of one's neighbors, id. at 332, suffer such diminution. Thus, it may be true that an occupant of a hotel room with connecting doors cannot reasonably assume that his conversations--even those spoken in a normal tone--never will be overheard by others in an adjoining room. Id. at 332; accord United States v. Jackson, 588 F.2d at 1051-52; United States v. Burnett, 493 F.Supp. 948, 952 (N.D.N.Y.1980), aff'd sub nom. United States v. Cook, 652 F.2d 55 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 452 U.S. 964, 101 S.Ct. 3115, 69 L.Ed.2d 975 (1981). But see Amsterdam, Perspectives on the Fourth Amendment, 58 MINN.L.REV. 349, 404-05 (1974). Similarly, a guest may not be entitled to expect that crawl spaces adjacent to his room, which are accessible without entering the room itself, will not be invaded by a stranger. See Marullo v. United States, 328 F.2d 361, 363-64 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 379 U.S. 850, 85 S.Ct. 93, 13 L.Ed.2d 53 (1964). But those constrictions of the occupant's interests in no way affect the legitimacy of his expectation that strangers will not invade the room itself and ransack storage areas within it. See United States v. Irizarry, 673 F.2d 554, 559-60 (1st Cir.1982); United States v. Anthon, 648 F.2d 669, 675-76 (10th Cir.1981) (dicta), cert. denied, 454 U.S. 1164, 102 S.Ct. 1039, 71 L.Ed.2d 320 (1982). 6 In sum, had Lyons been an ordinary guest in the Georgetown Mews, the removal and search of his overcoat clearly would have violated his reasonable expectations of privacy.B. The Appellant's Expectation of Privacy In This Case 12 The case before us is not quite so simple. Arguably, the unusual circumstances surrounding Lyons' occupancy of the room vitiated his privacy interest therein. Upon critical examination, however, the apparent relevance of each of those circumstances dissipates. 13 The Government first urges us to take into account the fact that Lyons had not paid for his room. Centrella had rented Room 209, paid for it with police funds, and registered it in his own name. Under these conditions, the Government insists, Lyons' expectation of privacy ... was qualified at best. Brief at 15-16 n. 12. 14 Much of the apparent force of the Government's argument is lost, however, when one takes into account the limited relevance of legal entitlements when identifying legitimate expectations of privacy. It has long been recognized that rights defined by positive law, though they sometimes figure in the constitutional calculus, do not control it. United States v. Salvucci, 448 U.S. 83, 91, 100 S.Ct. 2547, 2552, 65 L.Ed.2d 619 (1980); Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. at 143 & n. 12, 99 S.Ct. at 430 & n. 12; United States v. Jeffers, 342 U.S. 48, 52-54, 72 S.Ct. 93, 95-96, 96 L.Ed. 59 (1951) (the fact that, by statute, a person can have no property rights in contraband does not remove his right to object to its seizure). The crucial factor is whether a person's expectations are founded on understandings that are recognized and permitted by society. Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. at 144 n. 12, 99 S.Ct. at 430 n. 12. 7 15 Room 209 had been rented for Lyons by the police, posing as his prospective customers. It is irrelevant whether the room was provided to Lyons as part of his compensation for arranging the sale of the narcotics (as he perhaps thought) or as a means of facilitating a police investigation (as was the case); what matters is that the room had been tendered for his sole use during his stay in the city. As far as his reasonable privacy expectation was concerned, his position was thus comparable to that of an itinerant businessman whose apartment in a foreign city is leased on his behalf by his company, or a sought-after job applicant whose hotel room during the interviewing process is paid for by his prospective employer. Like Lyons, the businessman and applicant lack legally enforceable contractual (or property) rights to their rooms. Yet each regards the space provided for him as his temporary place of abode. 16 The expectation that one's dwelling is secure from invasion by strangers surely is one that society is willing to recognize and respect. At the very core [of the Fourth Amendment] stands the right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion. Silverman v. United States, 365 U.S. 505, 511, 81 S.Ct. 679, 682, 5 L.Ed.2d 734 (1961). Just as the protections due a person ensconced in his dwelling are not diminished by the fact that his residence is temporary, see Stoner v. California, 376 U.S. at 490, 84 S.Ct. at 893, so they are not vitiated by the fact that someone other than the dweller is paying the mortgage or rental. Nor can the result be different when the payor is the Government. Assume that, in the situations described above, the businessman's apartment had actually been leased by the police (with the connivance of his company), or the applicant's prospective employer was the District of Columbia. In neither instance could it be argued that the occupant had only a diminished expectation of privacy in his place of abode. Lyons' case is no different. 17 We find even less impressive the other unusual circumstance emphasized by the Government. It is said that Lyons likely was aware that the person who gave him the key to the room retained a duplicate of it. 8 Lyons' knowledge that someone else had the physical capacity to enter the room in his absence, the Government argues, must at least have reduced his legitimate expectations of privacy. This view fails to take into account the second of the principles described at the outset. The hypothesized fact that Lyons afforded access to the room to one other person--presumably someone he knew and trusted--did not diminish his privacy interest vis-a-vis the rest of the world. 9 To illustrate: it is quite commonplace for a lessor to retain a key to a rented apartment or house; however, the lessor's retention of a limited right of access surely does not nullify or diminish the tenant's reasonable expectations of privacy against uninvited and unauthorized intrusions by other persons. 18 Finally, it could be argued that, whatever expectations concerning the privacy of the room and closet Lyons might legitimately have entertained, he relinquished them when he invited Centrella and Bland into the room. In his oft-cited concurrence explicating the holding in Katz, Justice Harlan argued that the establishment of a constitutionally protected privacy interest requires demonstration of two conditions: first that [the defendant] have exhibited an actual (subjective) expectation of privacy and, second, that the expectation be one that society is prepared to recognize as 'reasonable.'  Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. at 361, 88 S.Ct. at 516. Modern doctrine in this area, as the preceding analysis suggests, has concentrated for the most part on the second, objective branch of this test. And uneasiness at the prospect of government acting in ways that diminish citizens' subjective expectations of privacy and then relying on those diminutions as justifications for encroachments upon their liberties has prompted most commentators and courts to eschew inquiry into defendants' states of mind. See United States v. White, 401 U.S. 745, 786, 91 S.Ct. 1122, 1143, 28 L.Ed.2d 453 (1971) (Harlan, J., dissenting) (suggesting considerable retreat from his position in Katz ); United States v. Taborda, 635 F.2d 131, 137 (2d Cir.1980); United States v. Kim, 415 F.Supp. 1252, 1256-57 (D.Hawaii 1976). 10 However, the Supreme Court has recently reaffirmed the relevance, at least in some contexts, of a defendant's subjective expectations. See Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735, 740 & n. 5, 99 S.Ct. 2577, 2580 & n. 5, 61 L.Ed.2d 220 (1979). And the case law suggests, at a minimum, that statements or conduct by the defendant inconsistent with an expectation of privacy in a given space will operate to neutralize his protected interest therein. See Rawlings v. Kentucky, 448 U.S. 98, 105, 100 S.Ct. 2556, 2561, 65 L.Ed.2d 633 (1980); Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. at 152, 99 S.Ct. at 435 (Powell, J., concurring). It might be argued that, by opening his door to the two policemen, Lyons acted in just such a fashion. 19 Brief reflection reveals, however, that Lyons' behavior was in no way inconsistent with a continued expectation of privacy in his room. He clearly believed that Centrella and Bland were the customers he had come to Washington to meet. He was not opening his room to public view; on the contrary, he was using it as a sanctuary in which to conduct quintessentially private business. To be sure, in doing so, he took the risk that Centrella and Bland would turn out to be police officers. Moreover, the fact that the detectives gained admission upon false pretenses in no way impairs the validity, for constitutional purposes, of his consent to their entrance. Lewis v. United States, 385 U.S. 206, 210-11, 87 S.Ct. 424, 427, 17 L.Ed.2d 312 (1966). 11 But it is nevertheless apparent that Lyons intended to admit only a few persons he assumed were trustworthy. 20 The foregoing conclusion permits us to disentangle two possible legal effects of Lyons' conduct. By securing Lyons' permission to enter his place of abode, Centrella and Bland acquired constitutional authority to seize all incriminating evidence subsequently given or sold to them, id., or in plain view from their vantage point on the premises, Washington v. Chrisman, 455 U.S. 1, 5-6, 102 S.Ct. 812, 816, 70 L.Ed.2d 778 (1982). But Lyons did not thereby manifest the absence of a subjective expectation that his room (and his closet) were private. As a result, he did not relinquish his right to object to a subsequent warrantless search of areas the undercover agents had not been invited to examine. See Lewis v. United States, 385 U.S. at 211, 87 S.Ct. at 427 (dicta); Gouled v. United States, 255 U.S. 298, 306, 41 S.Ct. 261, 263, 65 L.Ed. 647 (1921). 21