Court Opinion

ID: 9698577
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 19:54:29.097356+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:42.014502
License: Public Domain

CARTER, Justice,
with whom GLASS-MAN, Justice, joins, concurring.
I concur in the result reached by the majority opinion and also with the reasoning of the court on all issues save that of the question of defendants’ standing to challenge the seizure of their tourmaline from the store known as the Lamp Post. On that issue, though I concur in the result reached by the majority, I believe that the broad concept of “a reasonable expectation of privacy” as articulated in Lo-Ji Sales, Inc. v. New York, 422 U.S. 319, 99 S.Ct. 2319, 60 L.Ed.2d 920 and Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. 128, 99 S.Ct. 421, 58 L.Ed.2d 387 (1978) is not a necessary foundation, on the facts of this case, to the conclusion that defendants have standing to object to the seizure of gems at the Lamp Post.
In the circumstances of this case, standing to challenge the seizure of the gems while on public display does not depend upon any “expectation of privacy” in the broad sense discussed in Rakas. If it did, defendants’ claim of standing must surely fail in this case. Clearly, here there was no “expectation of privacy” as those words are used in Rakas, because the stones were put out in cases for the public to see. What was present was an expectation that no one would remove the stones and carry them away in violation of the defendants’ proprietary interest in them. Therefore, so far as the defendants object to Officer Carter’s visual observation of the gems in their display case (the search), they are without standing because they did not expect, did *952not, indeed, seek or desire, privacy so far as observation of the stones is concerned.1
So far as their objection to the warrant-less entry of the officer into the case in which the gems were displayed and their subsequent seizure and removal from the premises is concerned, all that is required as a factual predicate for defendants’ standing to object to that conduct is their claim of ownership of the gems. The seizure of the stones is a per se violation of their property interest in the gems. There is no need to find in any broader sense “a reasonable expectation of privacy” in order to determine that standing exists to challenge the seizure of the gems because the intrusion upon the property rights of the defendants in the gems arising from their ownership of them, gives them sufficient interest in the legality of the seizure to permit them to challenge it.
Thus, it is not necessary to attempt to artfully construct, as does the majority, some reasonable expectation on the part of the defendants to “privacy” in order to determine that they have a legitimate interest in objecting to the use of the gems as evidence against them. That cannot be successfully done in any event, because where items are put on public display for the very purpose of being seen by the public, there cannot be an expectation of privacy, as such, sufficient to support a finding of standing in the exhibitor. In fact, the majority opinion actually finds here and classifies under the rubric of “a reasonable expectation of privacy” an expectation that “No visitor to the store ... [would] carry away the jewelry without paying for it.” That is not the broad, amorphous “expectation of privacy” conceptualized in Rakas. That is an expectation of respect for one’s property rights stemming from ownership. That expectation is only a sometime component of the broader concept put forth in Rakas. It will not support standing to challenge the legality of a search where the property is held under circumstances showing that no privacy is expected. However, by definition, a seizure of property, not contraband, even if placed upon public inspection, intrudes upon the ownership rights of the exhibitor. Where the challenge is to the seizure of the property, a claim of property interest therein is, by itself, sufficient to confer standing on one asserting the challenge.
The concept that one has standing to object to seizure of his own property simply because of his proprietary interest in it is made explicit in Rakas v. Illinois, supra. There, the court specifically points out that though a person may have no expectation of privacy in premises searched sufficient to confer standing to challenge the search, standing is not thereby denied for all purposes. The court said:
This is not to say that such visitors could not contest the lawfulness of the seizure of evidence or the search if their own property were seized during the search, (emphasis added).
Rakas v. Illinois, supra at 439 U.S. 142, 99 S.Ct. 421, 430, 58 L.Ed.2d 400, n.11. The court goes on to make the following specific observation on the impact upon standing of a property right in the seized article:
One of the main rights attaching to property is the right to exclude others, see W. Blackstone, commentaries, book II, ch. 1, and one who owns or lawfully possesses or controls property will in all likelihood have a legitimate expectation of privacy by virtue of this right to exclude. Expectations of privacy protected by the Fourth Amendment, of course, need not be based on a common-law interest in real or personal property, or on the invasion of such an interest. These ideas were rejected both in Jones, supra and Katz, supra. But by focusing on legitimate expectations of privacy in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, the Court has not altogether abandoned use of property concepts in determining the presence or absence of a privacy interest protected by the Amendment, (emphasis added).
Id. at 439 U.S. 143, 99 S.Ct. 430, 58 L.Ed.2d 401, n.12.
*953There is nothing at odds with this concept, as approved explicitly in Rakas, supra, to be found in Lo-Ji Sales, supra. In Lo-Ji Sales, the Court does not indicate that it treats the seized items as anything other than property capable of lawful ownership by private individuals. Even if part of the items seized, namely the obscene magazines, were to be treated as contraband, the officers there seized other items, such as projectors and viewing equipment, which clearly would not be contraband and were the subject of lawful ownership.
For the reasons expressed above, it is my view that the proper reason why defendants have standing to contest the seizure of the gems from the Lamp Post is not that they had some “expectation of privacy” in the premises but rather that they have a proprietary interest in the gems themselves which gives them a sufficient interest in the legality of the seizure of those gems to challenge it.

. In fact, such observation was not a search in any event, as the majority points out by relying on Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 468, 91 S.Ct. 2022, 2039, 29 L.Ed.2d 564 (1971).