Court Opinion

ID: 9630527
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 10:13:01.979737+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:07:39.915802
License: Public Domain

Skoglund, J.,
dissenting. I do not dispute the significance of the home as a place of heightened privacy expectations, but disagree with the majority’s conclusion that the actions of the police in this case violated Article 11 of the Vermont Constitution. This Court has consistently held that the core value protected by Article 11 is freedom from unreasonable governmental intrusion into legitimate *360expectations of privacy. State v. Morris, 165 Vt. 111, 115, 680 A.2d 90, 93 (1996); State v. Savva, 159 Vt. 75, 87, 616 A.2d 774, 780-81 (1991); State v. Blow, 157 Vt. 513, 517, 602 A.2d 552, 555 (1991); State v. Brooks, 157 Vt. 490, 493, 601 A.2d 963, 964 (1991); State v. Kirchoff, 156 Vt. 1, 5-6, 587 A.2d 988, 991 (1991). I suggest that there can be no legitimate or reasonable expectation that a conversational interchange between a suspect and police detectives investigating a crime will be private, regardless of where that conversation takes place.
A very brief review of the law of search and seizure under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution is offered as an aid to understanding the error I see in the majority’s approach. Before the 1967 case of Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967), neither wiretapping nor electronic eavesdropping violated a defendant’s Fourth Amendment rights unless there had been an official search and seizure of his person, or such a seizure of his papers or his tangible material effects, or an actual physical invasion of his house “or curtilage” for the purpose of making a seizure. See Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 466 (1928) (evidence obtained from telephone calls intercepted without warrant was admissible as there was no entry into defendants’ houses or offices); Goldman v. United States, 316 U.S. 129, 134-35 (1942) (use of a “detectaphone” held against the wall of adjoining office to overhear conversation of defendant was not violation of the Fourth Amendment, as “what was heard . . . was not made illegal by trespass or unlawful entry.”). But where “eavesdropping was accomplished by means of an unauthorized physical penetration into the premises occupied” by the defendant, although falling short of a “technical trespass under the local property law,” the Fourth Amendment was violated and any evidence of what was seen and heard, as well as tangible objects seized, was considered the inadmissible fruit of an unlawful invasion. Silverman v. United States, 365 U.S. 505, 509 (1961) (eavesdropping accomplished by means of “spike mike” inserted through wall of adjoining house made contact with heating duct in defendant’s house, which then acted as a “giant microphone,” held to violate Fourth Amendment rights.).
In Katz, the Supreme Court heard a challenge to evidence of petitioner’s side of a phone conversation, overheard by FBI agents who had attached an electronic listening and recording device to the outside of the public telephone booth from which petitioner had *361placed his calls. See 389 U.S. at 348. The petitioner had framed the issue as whether a public telephone booth is a constitutionally protected area so that a right to privacy attached. The Government maintained that it was not. The Court rejected this formulation of the issue: “In the first place, the correct solution of Fourth Amendment problems is not necessarily promoted by incantation of the phrase ‘constitutionally protected area.’ ” Id. at 350. It wrote:
this effort to decide whether or not a given “area,” viewed in the abstract, is “constitutionally protected” deflects attention from the problem presented by this case. For the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places.. What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection. . . . But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected.
Id. at 351-52.
The Court held that the FBI should have obtained a warrant prior to the use of the electronic surveillance involved in the case. The import of the case is the Court’s focus on the privacy expectations of the individual and not on the locus or extent of the government intrusion. “One who occupies [the phone booth], shuts the door behind him, and pays the toll that permits him to place a call is surely entitled to assume that the words he utters into the mouthpiece will not be broadcast to the world.” Id. at 352. Katz overruled Olmstead and Goldman and “swept away doctrines that electronic eavesdropping is permissible under the Fourth Amendment unless physical invasion of a constitutionally protected area produced the challenged evidence.” United States v. White, 401 U.S. 745, 748 (1971).
After Katz, the concept of “constitutionally protected areas” no longer served as a “talismanic solution to every Fourth Amendment problem.” 1 W. LaFave, Search and Seizure § 2.4(a), at 524 (3d ed. 1996). Justice Harlan, in his concurrence in Katz, summarized the appropriate analysis as follows: “that there is a twofold requirement, first that a person have exhibited an actual (subjective) expectation of privacy and, second, that the expectation be one that society is prepared to recognize as ‘reasonable.’ Thus a man’s home is, for most purposes, a place where he expects privacy, but objects, activities, or statements that he exposes to the ‘plain view’ of outsiders are not *362'protected’ because no intention to keep them to himself has been exhibited.” Katz, 389 U.S. at 361.
We have adopted the United States Supreme Court’s rationale in Katz and opined that Article 11 of the Vermont Constitution, “like the Fourth Amendment, protects people, not places.” State v. Zaccaro, 154 Vt. 83, 90-91, 574 A.2d 1256, 1261 (1990) (citing Katz, 389 U.S. at 351). In those cases where we have interpreted Article 11 as providing broader protection than the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution, we have consistently, until today, used the “reasonable expectation of privacy” analysis that is the cornerstone of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. For example, in State v. Kirchoff, 156 Vt. at 10, 587 A.2d at 994, we held that under Article 11 a lawful possessor has a “reasonable expectation of privacy” in affairs conducted in open fields where indicia, such as fences and “no trespassing” signs, would lead a reasonable person to conclude the area is private. We emphasized in Kirchoff th&t a person cannot rely-on Article 11 to protect areas or activities that have been willingly exposed to the public. Id. at 7, 587 A.2d at 992-93.1
Again in Savva, 159 Vt. at 91-92, 616 A.2d at 783, we found a more expansive protection under Article 11 than under the Fourth Amendment for containers located in automobiles. We grounded our analysis on defendant’s expectation of privacy in the packages contained in the hatchback of his vehicle and again noted that Article 11 does not protect areas willingly exposed to the public. Id. at 89, 616 A.2d at 782.
It is true that, throughout Fourth Amendment and Article 11 jurisprudence, the home has enjoyed heightened privacy expectations. In emphasizing this principle, the majority finds support in two of our decisions. Both, I suggest, were decided on a reasonable expectation standard. In State v. Blow, 157 Vt. at 515, 602 A.2d at 553, a police informant was wired with electronic transmitter and sent to the defendant’s house where he purchased marijuana. Defendant moved to suppress the tape recordings of the transactions and the officer’s testimony about them. The judge allowed the detective to testily about the conversations between the informant and the defendant at the time of the sale. The recordings themselves *363were not introduced. In deciding the case, we acknowledged that the “assumption of the risk” rationale set out in White, 401 U.S. at 751-52, would preclude any finding of a violation of the federal constitution.2 However, we then analyzed the defendant’s claim under Article 11 using the “expectation of privacy” principles derived from Katz: (1) whether the defendant had “an actual (subjective) expectation of privacy” concerning his conversations in his home with an undercover police informant, and (2) whether the expectation is one that society is prepared to recognize as “reasonable.” Blow, 157 Vt. at 517, 602 A.2d at 555 (quoting Katz, 389 U.S. at 361). We found that warrantless electronic participant monitoring conducted in a home offended defendant’s expectation of privacy and the core values of Article 11 and suppressed the evidence. However, in emphasizing the importance of the home as a focus of Article 11 analysis in Blow, we did not signal “a return to the formalism of Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928), under which the privacy right was invaded only by a trespass to property. On the contrary, the privacy value should be protected wherever it is unreasonably threatened . . . .” Blow, 157 Vt. at 520, 602 A.2d at 556. It was the invasion of privacy that concerned us, not a mere trespass into the home.
A different result was obtained in State v. Brooks, 157 Vt. at 491-94, 601 A.2d at 963-65, where we considered a challenge to participant electronic monitoring where the wired informant and the defendant were in two adjacent vehicles in a parking lot. Applying the same “reasonable expectation of privacy analysis,” we held that such monitoring was not regulated by Article 11: “[W]e find that defendant, regardless of what he actually expected, did not enjoy a reasonable expectation of privacy in a public parking lot.” Id. at 493, 601 A.2d at 964.
Of course we hold a deeply rooted, subjective expectation of privacy in our homes. The right to retreat into our personal sanctuary — be it an apartment, a rented room, a hut or a mansion — and to be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion is at the heart of Article 11. The problem with the majority’s approach to this *364case is its near total reliance on the fact that the recorded conversation took place in defendant’s home. It neglects to analyze whether the conversation was a private one, one in which an individual would retain a subjective expectation of privacy, and whether society is - prepared to recognize that expectation as “reasonable.”
“Article 11 protects the people from governmental intrusion into their private affairs; to the extent their affairs are willingly made public, the provision has no application.” Kirchoff, 156 Vt. at 7, 587 A.2d at 993. “In determining whether persons have a privacy interest in any given area or activity, we examine both private subjective expectations and general social norms.” State v. Morris, 165 Vt. at 115, 680 A.2d at 94 (citing Blow, 157 Vt. at 517-18, 602 A.2d at 555).
First, let us not forget, defendant invited the officers into his home and agreed to talk with them about allegations that he had engaged in sexual acts with a foster child. By speaking freely with officers, whom he understood were investigating his possible involvement in a serious crime, defendant could not have had a reasonable expectation that the questioning was private or would be kept private. The same conclusion is reached even viewing the facts of this case with a mind towards the heightened privacy expectation generally associated with one’s home. This is not a conversation over a kitchen table between friends. He knew who he was talking to, and the purpose of the officers’ visit. Would society think he had a legitimate or reasonable expectation that this exchange with police would be private? I think not.
As in Blow, the majority finds support in Commonwealth v. Blood, 507 N.E.2d 1029 (Mass. 1987), and in State v. Glass, 583 P.2d 872 (Alaska 1978). However, in these cases the conversations the courts held to enjoy an expectation of privacy were captured by confidential informants in the defendants’ homes. In neither case did the defendants have reason to suspect that their conversation partners were working with the government. And, in both cases the courts anchored their analysis in whether the expectation of privacy was one society was willing to embrace. “When we confront the question whether police activities amount to a search or seizure within the meaning of art. 14 [of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights], we ask, Vhether the defendants’ expectation of privacy [in the circumstances] is one which society could recognize as reasonable.’ ” Blood, 507 N.E.2d at 1033 (citing Commonwealth v. Podgurski, 436 *365N.E.2d 150, 152 (1982)). “[0]ne communicating private matters to another exhibits an actual (subjective) expectation of privacy whether or not the listener is equipped with electronic devices. The key question is whether that expectation of privacy is one that society is prepared to recognize as reasonable.” Glass, 583 P.2d at 880.
Another Massachusetts case, Commonwealth v. Thorpe, 424 N.E.2d 250 (Mass. 1981), provides a succinct summation of why privacy is protected and whether warrantless, secret recordings of conversations between known police officers and suspects undermine this protection. In Thorpe, defendant moved to suppress certain tape recordings of conversations between himself and a police officer to whom he offered to sell a copy of a police sergeant’s promotional examination. Wearing a tape recording device, the officer had several conversations with Thorpe. On appeal, Thorpe argued that the warrantless recordings violated his right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures as guaranteed by art. 14 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights because he had an expectation of privacy in not having his conversation with the officer recorded. The court rejected this argument and held:
We do not think that free speech and privacy values are unduly threatened by the risk that when one speaks to a known police officer he may be recording the conversation. This is not the type of warrantless surveillance condemned by the courts and commentators . . . , whose impact on privacy is “such as to undermine that confidence and sense of security in dealing with one another that is characteristic of individual relationships between citizens in a free society.”
Thorpe, 424 N.E.2d at 258 (citing White, 401 U.S. at 787 (Harlan, J., dissenting)) (emphasis added).
Analysis of privacy expectations in situations such as that present in Thorpe, where defendant is aware that he is talking to police, requires an evaluation of the values intended to be protected by Article 11, such as the exchange of thoughts and ideas, personal trust between individuals, free expression and individuality, or as stated by the court in Thorpe, the “confidence and sense of security in dealing with one another.” 424 N.E.2d at 258. While it is certainly true that surreptitious recording of conversations between citizens can have a chilling effect of such forms of freedom, this effect is *366rendered de minimis “when one is aware, or reasonably should be aware, that he or she is speaking to a police officer.” City & Borough of Juneau v. Quinto, 684 P.2d 127, 129 (Alaska 1984) (tape recording of defendant’s conversation with police officer was properly admitted into evidence at trial, when defendant knew, or reasonably should have known, that he was speaking to police officer); People v. Suite, 161 Cal. Rptr. 825, 829 (Ct. App. 1980) (holding that defendant’s reliance on cases decided on a “reasonable expectation of privacy” standard was “sorely misplaced” when he sought to suppress recordings of telephoned bomb threats to police, observing that it was “ludicrous” for defendant to argue that his calls to police were confidential communications); In re A. W., 982 P.2d 842, 847 (Colo. 1999) (“[O]ne who is speaking in the actual presence of a police officer or detective has neither a subjectively nor an objectively reasonable expectation of privacy.”); State v. Bonilla, 598 P.2d 783, 784-86 (Wash. Ct. App. 1979) (where defendant called police dispatcher and confessed to murdering his wife, while other officer listened in on extension lines, “[i]t would strain reason for [defendant] to claim he expected his conversations with the police dispatcher to remain purely between the two of them.”).
I return again to the fact that defendant invited the officers into his home and agreed to answer questions surrounding their investigation. There is no dispute that his consent was voluntary. When consent is given to a search or seizure, there is usually no violation of Article 11. See State v. Sheehan, 171 Vt. 642, 643, 768 A.2d 1275, 1278 (2000) (mem.); Zaccaro, 154 Vt. at 90, 574 A.2d at 1261; State v. White, 129 Vt. 220, 224, 274 A.2d 690, 692 (1971).
For example, in Sheehan, the defendant argued that his consent was not voluntary, contending that police deceived him because their request to enter the home to talk with him was a pretext to gain entry to arrest him. In finding that his consent was indeed voluntary, we relied on the fact that the uniformed police identified themselves, asked defendant’s consent to enter the residence so that they could talk to him, and that the scope of the conversation was not limited or defined. “Once inside, the police acted within the scope of their broad invitation and did precisely what they said they would, talk to defendant. Nothing about the police officers’ behavior suggests that they engaged in trickery or misrepresented their purpose in order to gain entry into defendant’s home.” Sheehan, 171 Vt. at 643, 768 A.2d at 1278. Like the officers in Sheehan, the officers in the case before *367us did not misrepresent their purpose or engage in trickery in order to gain entry into defendant’s home, or to induce him to speak with them. And, in fact, they specifically told him what topic they wanted to talk about — the allegations brought against him by a foster child.
Ah, but was it a trick to secretly record the conversation that ensued?
In State v. Costin, 168 Vt. 175, 181, 720 A.2d 866, 870 (1998), we analyzed the situation where law enforcement had placed video surveillance cameras on a suspected marijuana field. We dismissed the claim that the video surveillance alone created an Article 11 search. ‘We do not see how Article 11 protects against the use of a technological device that accomplishes the same result as a lawful in-person stake-out, and nothing more.” Id. Here, we have a lawful, consented to conversation with investigating officers. The fact that they captured the defendant’s voluntary statements using a technologically superior means to the note-taking and memories of the officers does not “ ‘transmogrify a constitutionally innocent act into a constitutionally forbidden one.’ ” Id. (quoting Vega-Rodriguez v. Puerto Rico Tel. Co., 110 F.3d 174, 181 (1st Cir. 1997)).
In Lopez v. United States, 373 U.S. 427 (1963), the Supreme Court upheld the use of a wire recording of a conversation between the defendant and an Internal Revenue Service agent that occurred in defendant’s office during which the defendant offered the agent a bribe. The IRS agent had recorded the conversation on a small recording device carried in his pocket. While the decision in Lopez was based, not on consideration of the defendant’s expectations of privacy, but on outmoded considerations that “no trespass was committed,”3 the reasoning quoted below does not suffer from the difference in approach and is strikingly similar to the reasoning we utilized in Costin. The Court wrote:
Once it is plain that [the agent] could properly testify about his conversation with Lopez, the constitutional claim relating to the recording of that conversation emerges in proper perspective. . . . Indeed this case involves no “eavesdropping” whatever in any proper sense of that term. The Government did not use an electronic device to listen in on conversations it could not otherwise have heard. Instead, *368the device was used only to obtain the most reliable evidence possible of a conversation in which the Government’s own agent was a participant and which that agent was fully entitled to disclose. . . . [The device] was carried in and out by an agent who was there with petitioner’s assent, and it neither saw nor heard more than the agent himself.
Lopez, 373 U.S. at 438-39.
In a criticism of the majority’s approach in Costin, the dissent suggested the Court was “resurrect[ing] an outdated, formalistic analysis that rigidly focuses on mapping out property worthy of constitutional protection while ignoring modem search-and-seizure law, which examines expectations of privacy and societal interests.” 168 Vt. at 184, 720 A.2d at 872. This, I suggest, is what is happening here. Whether we are dealing with open fields as in Costin and Kirchoff, or garbage left on the curb as in State v. Morris, 165 Vt. at 115-16, 680 A.2d at 93-94, or events that transpire in the home as in Blow, the core principle that triggers Article 11 protection is the individual’s expectation of privacy and not the location of the government activity challenged.
Because Article 11 protects people, not places, in this case, the location of the conversation is constitutionally immaterial. I would hold that the recording of defendant’s conversations with the police officers under these circumstances was not a violation of any right guaranteed to him by Article 11 of the Constitution of the State of Vermont and that the court erréd in suppressing evidence of that tape recording on the grounds stated. As stated in Lopez:
Stripped to its essentials, [respondent’s] argument amounts to saying that he has a constitutional right to rely on possible flaws in the agent’s memory, or to challenge the agent’s credibility without being beset by corroborating evidence that is not susceptible of impeachment. For no other argument can justify excluding an accurate version of a conversation that the agent could testify to from memory. .
373 U.S. at 439.
I hesitate to speak for society as a whole, but respectfully suggest that Vermonters would not find reasonable a suspect’s expectations that his responses to police questions about possible involvement in a crime are private. I am authorized to state that Chief Justice Amestoyjoins in this dissent.

 In keeping with this approach, a few days after our decision in Kirchoff we decided State v. Chester, 156 Vt. 638, 587 A.2d 1008 (1991) (mem.), and found that the police did not violate Article 11 when they walked on land that lacked barriers or signs prohibiting entry.

 In White, the United States Supreme Court held that the government use of informants equipped with concealed devices to record conversations with unknowing suspects did not violate the Fourth Amendment. 401 U.S. at 751. The federal constitutionality of warrantless electronic surveillance with the consent of one party to a conversation was upheld on the ground that when one speaks one voluntarily assumes not only the risk that one’s listener may repeat what one says to others, but also the risk that the listener may be recording or monitoring the conversation for broadcast to others.

 The decision in Lopez predated the Court’s change in approach set forth in Katz. At the time of Lopez, it was “insisted only that the electronic device not be planted by an unlawful physical invasion of a constitutionally protected area.” Lopez, 373 U.S. at 438-39.