Court Opinion

ID: 9791371
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:09:54.19384+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:35.771277
License: Public Domain

Utter, J.
(concurring) — I concur in the decision of the majority because I understand it to rest on the proposition that since the plants were visible and identifiable by the unaided eye from the street in front of defendants’ apartment, there could be no reasonable expectation that their existence or nature would remain private. The use of binoculars here is therefore irrelevant because they revealed no more than was discernible without them. There is no justification for an expectation that items exposed to the unaugmented view of passersby will remain private. But a belief that one’s neighbors and local police will refrain from using binoculars to peer through open windows may well be reasonable. Were defendants’ plants recognizable only through the use of binoculars we would have to reach that more *126difficult question. They were not, however, and we do not.
Rosellini, J., concurs with Utter, J.
Petition for rehearing denied March 5, 1975.