Court Opinion

ID: 9845803
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 03:28:34.201724+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:16:22.219030
License: Public Domain

Justice QUINN
dissenting:
The trial court based its suppression ruling on article II, section 7 of the Colorado Constitution, which provides that “[t]he people shall be secure in their persons, papers, homes and effects, from unreasonable searches and seizures,” and ruled that a dog sniff directed at the closed door of the defendant’s locker constituted a search under the Colorado Constitution and that the search was not supported by reasonable suspicion. In announcing the judgment, Justice Vollack’s opinion, which *989Chief Justice Rovira joins and in which Justice Erickson specially concurs, concludes that the dog sniff in question did not constitute a search and never reaches the issue of reasonable suspicion. I disagree with that conclusion because I believe that the Colorado Constitution contemplates a greater privacy expectation in a padlocked storage locker than Justice Vollack’s opinion is willing to concede.
I.
The facts of this case are critical to a proper resolution of not only whether there was a search but also whether there was reasonable suspicion for any such search. The evidence at the suppression hearing established that the defendant rented a garage-sized storage locker from Park’n Store Self Storage Company. The storage company is surrounded by a fence, and the only entrance to the lockers is through a gate. Lessees are admitted through the gate after signing an entry record in the storage company’s office. The defendant’s locker was padlocked, and only he retained the key.
On July 18, 1989, Agent Johnson, an Englewood police officer, received a call from the owner of the storage company who told him that a lessee of one of the storage lockers was acting suspiciously by visiting the locker daily for short periods of time on a motorcycle and carrying only a backpack. When Agent Johnson arrived at the storage company, the owner told him that the lessee in question was James Wieser. Johnson remembered the Wieser name from a previous surveillance of Ronald Marsh, a suspected drug dealer.
Marsh previously came to the attention of the police when a one-pound package of methamphetamine was intercepted at a Federal Express office in Englewood, Colorado. Fingerprint testing disclosed that Marsh’s fingerprints were on the package. Johnson, working in conjunction with the Drug Enforcement Administration, placed Marsh under surveillance and followed him after Marsh flew into Denver in March 1989. Marsh drove a pickup truck from Stapleton Airport to the defendant’s apartment on West Jewell Avenue. The defendant and Marsh went to a so-called “head shop,” which Johnson described as u store that sells “legal drug paraphernalia.” Johnson, however, did not testify that he observed the wares sold in the particular store in question, nor did he describe any transaction inside the store involving the defendant or Marsh. After leaving the store, the defendant and Marsh then visited various other locations over the next three days, including the home of the person who leased the storage locker with the defendant. Marsh left town and returned to Denver a week later. The defendant picked Marsh up at the airport on Marsh’s next visit to Denver, and both the defendant and Marsh went to various locations in the Denver area. Marsh left town after three days, and the defendant was not seen in his presence again. At no time during his surveillance did Agent Johnson observe the defendant or Marsh perform any illegal act.
After visiting with the storage company owner on July 18, and upon recalling Wieser’s name from his previous surveillance of Marsh, Agent Johnson decided to conduct a dog sniff of the defendant’s locker for drugs. The storage company owner gave Johnson permission to take a dog onto the premises for that purpose. Johnson brought a certified drug-sniffing dog to the storage company, and upon walking the dog in front of the door to Wieser’s locker, Johnson observed that the dog alerted at the locker. Johnson then obtained a search warrant for the locker and recovered illegal drugs from the locker during the execution of the warrant.
At the conclusion of the evidence, the trial court, relying primarily upon this court’s decision in People v. Unruh, 713 P.2d 370 (Colo.), cert. denied, 476 U.S. 1171, 106 S.Ct. 2894, 90 L.Ed.2d 981 (1986), held that the defendant had a subjective expectation of privacy in his locker, that this privacy expectation was reasonable under the Colorado Constitution, and that, consequently, the dog sniff of the defendant’s locker constituted a search which required reasonable suspicion for its initi*990ation. The court also determined that the prosecution’s evidence failed to establish that Officer Johnson had a reasonable suspicion to support the dog sniff.
II.
This court has held that article II, section 7 of the Colorado Constitution provides greater privacy protection to Colorado citizens than the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution. E.g., People v. Oates, 698 P.2d 811 (Colo.1985) (government-installed beeper in commercially purchased item is a search under Colorado Constitution); People v. Corr, 682 P.2d 20 (Colo.), cert denied, 469 U.S. 855, 105 S.Ct. 181, 83 L.Ed.2d 115 (1984) (government use of telephone toll records is a search under Colorado Constitution); People v. Sporleder, 666 P.2d 135 (Colo.1983) (governmental installation of pen register is a search under Colorado Constitution); Charnes v. DiGiacomo, 200 Colo. 94, 612 P.2d 1117 (1980) (governmental seizure of bank records is an intrusion protected by the Colorado Constitution). In People v. Un-ruh, 713 P.2d 370, we specifically addressed whether a dog sniff constituted a search. In Unruh, a police officer found a car abandoned with a safe visible in the trunk. It was determined that the safe had been stolen in the burglary of a particular house. The front door of the house was open, the door jamb was splintered, and no one was present inside. After entering the house, a detective located the closet from which the safe apparently had been taken and observed what appeared to be drug paraphernalia and a white residue in the closet. The detective, suspecting that the safe contained drugs, subjected the safe to a dog sniff at the police station. The dog responded to the safe by pawing at it, and the detective obtained a warrant to open the safe. Execution of the warrant resulted in the seizure of illegal drugs from the safe. One of the issues before us in Un-ruh was whether the dog sniff of the safe constituted a search. In holding that it did, we acknowledged that the Colorado Constitution provides greater privacy protections than the United States Constitution and reasoned as follows:
Whether a dog sniff constitutes a search turns first on whether it was an intrusion into something that the individual reasonably expected to be private. The analysis in many of the dog sniff cases has stopped with the determination that a dog sniff, much less intrusive than a typical search, is not an invasion of a reasonable expectation of privacy.... Conceding that dog sniffs are less intrusive than other types of investigative techniques, we still must consider whether the limited intrusiveness of the sniff is an invasion of a reasonable expectation of privacy. Most of the cases in which courts have concluded that a dog sniff is not a search have involved either luggage or closed containers in an airport where, for safety reasons, people may expect their luggage or parcels to be subject to some type of governmental inspection....
Although we need not make the decision in this case, it may well be, as the majority of courts have held, that when a dog is used to sniff luggage or parcels at an airport, the sniff does not constitute a search because the persons whose luggage or parcels are sniffed have no reasonable expectation of privacy from an investigative technique as non-intrusive as a dog sniff. However, the facts of the case before us do not lend themselves to the same mode of resolution because the defendant, or anyone in his situation, could have no expectation that the privacy provided by a locked safe in his basement would be subject to a governmental investigative technique of any sort. Therefore, we determine that, because the defendant had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the safe, the dog sniff was a search.
713 P.2d at 377-78 (citations and footnote omitted). We then determined in Unruh that a dog sniff, although a search, was a limited form of intrusion that required reasonable suspicion, rather than probable cause, for its initiation. 713 P.2d at 379.
Our decision in Unruh is not without support in cases from other jurisdictions. For example, in Commonwealth v. John*991ston, 515 Pa. 454, 530 A.2d 74 (1987), the Pennsylvania Supreme Court held that a dog sniff of a storage locker constituted a search that required reasonable and articu-lable grounds for believing that contraband may be present in the locker. Similarly, in People v. Evans, 65 Cal.App.3d 924, 134 Cal.Rptr. 436 (1977), the court held that “a search with canines conducted without some preknowledge or reasonably strong suspicion that contraband is to be found in a particular place [storage locker] is a constitutionally impermissible invasion of the suspects’ reasonable expectations of privacy.” See also Pooley v. State, 705 P.2d 1293 (Alaska App.1985) (dog sniff is a minimally intrusive search under Alaska Constitution and requires reasonable suspicion); State v. Kosta, 75 Or.App. 713, 708 P.2d 365 (1985); affirmed on other grounds, 304 Or. 549, 748 P.2d 72 (1987) (under Oregon Constitution, dog sniff valid if police have reasonable suspicion).1
In concluding that the dog sniff in this case was not a search, Justice Vol-lack’s opinion does not dispute the fact that the defendant had a subjective expectation of privacy in his storage locker. Relying on the United States Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Place, 462 U.S. 696, 103 S.Ct. 2637, 77 L.Ed.2d 110 (1983), Justice Vollack’s opinion turns this ease on the proposition that the defendant’s privacy expectation was not legitimate because the sniff took place in “a public right of way” and was not one that society is prepared to consider reasonable. I disagree with that analysis for several reasons.
Although the storage company’s lockers obviously were available to the public for rental, I fail to see how the access way inside the storage facility complex constituted a “public” right of way. The access area was not the equivalent of a city street available to the public at large, but rather was accessible only to lessees after logging in at the storage facility. More importantly, I view any reliance on Place as misplaced. In Place, the Supreme Court concluded that the exposure of a person's luggage to a dog sniff in a public airport did not constitute a “search” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, but then went on to hold that the 90-minute detention of the luggage was unreasonable and that the evidence obtained from the sniff was constitutionally inadmissible. In reaching its conclusion that the dog sniff did not constitute a search, the Court was interpreting the United States Constitution. The district court’s suppression ruling in the instant case was based on the Colorado Constitution.
Furthermore, the facts in Place are clearly distinguishable from the present case. The defendant in Place was detained at an airport, after having aroused the suspicions of the police in Miami, and his bags were subjected to a dog sniff in another public airport. As we noted in Un-ruh, a person bringing luggage to a public airport has a diminished expectation of privacy because, as everyone knows, baggage is subject to some type of governmental inspection prior to boarding a plane. In contrast to the facts in Place, however, Wieser leased a storage locker in a complex that was protected by a fence and secured by a gate. It goes without saying that people rent storage lockers for several reasons, including safeguarding their property against loss or damage and protecting their privacy interest in the property placed in *992the locker. A person renting a storage locker reasonably expects that the property stored therein will not be subject to a governmental search in the absence of a legitimate constitutional basis for such an intrusion. Even after Place, several federal circuit and district courts have not read that decision as expansively as Justice Vol-lack’s opinion does here, but instead have required reasonable suspicion for a dog sniff intrusion under circumstances not involving an airport sniff of luggage. See, e.g., United States v. Whitehead, 849 F.2d 849 (4th Cir.1988) (dog sniff of train compartment requires reasonable suspicion); United States v. Quinn, 815 F.2d 153 (1st Cir.1987) (dog sniff of car for narcotics must be based on reasonable suspicion); United States v. Thomas, 757 F.2d 1359 (2nd Cir.) cert. denied, 474 U.S. 819, 106 S.Ct. 66, 88 L.Ed.2d 54 (1985) (dog sniff outside apartment door constituted a search requiring a warrant); United States v. Morales, 714 F.Supp. 1146 (D.N.M.1989) (dog sniff of vehicle stopped during roadblock check required reasonable suspicion); United States v. Hill, 701 F.Supp. 1522 (D.Kan.1988) (reasonable suspicion required for dog sniff of package).
A person who rents a padlocked storage locker, in my view, manifests a subjective expectation of privacy in the property secured within the locker and such expectation is one that should be recognized as reasonable under the Colorado Constitution. Ominous implications flow from a contrary holding. The rule espoused in Justice Vollack’s opinion would permit a dog sniff unsupported by any cause whatever, reasonable or otherwise, on city streets as persons walk by, in the common ways of offices and apartment buildings, in parking lots where automobiles are parked and locked, and in countless other areas that persons reasonably expect are secure from a governmental intrusion calculated to determine the nature of property not exposed to public view. Although the government has an extremely important interest in enforcing drug laws, that interest should not be furthered at the expense of privacy interests that are intrinsic to free society. Because such interests are entitled to constitutional protection, I would hold that the dog sniff conducted by Agent Johnson in this case constituted a search for purposes of article II, section 7 of the Colorado Constitution.
III.
After determining that the dog sniff constituted a limited form of search, the trial court, following this court’s decision in Un-ruh, held that Agent Johnson did not have reasonable suspicion to initiate the dog sniff of the defendant’s locker for drugs. I would affirm this aspect of the trial court’s suppression ruling.
Reasonable suspicion requires that an officer be able to point to specific and articu-lable facts which, taken together with the rational inferences from those facts, give rise to a reasonable suspicion that illegal drugs, contraband, or incriminating evidence will be found in the place sought to be searched. E.g., People v. Ratcliff, 778 P.2d 1371, 1376-77 (Colo.1989); People v. Melgosa, 753 P.2d 221, 225-26 (Colo.1988). The facts on which Agent Johnson relied in conducting the dog sniff consisted of the following: that the defendant had been in the company of Marsh, a suspected drug dealer, on two separate occasions; that on one of those occasions the defendant and Marsh went to a so-called “head shop”; that the defendant and Marsh on one occasion briefly visited the home of the co-lessee of the defendant’s storage locker; and that the defendant made several visits to his locker by motorcycle for short periods of time while carrying only a backpack. In my view, the trial court’s resolution of the reasonable suspicion issue finds support in the record and should be accorded deference by this court.
While Agent Johnson may have suspected that the defendant might possibly be in possession of illegal drugs, he was not able to offer the specific and articulable facts necessary to elevate his bare suspicion into a reasonable one. The defendant’s occasional association with Marsh, a suspected drug dealer, added nothing more than a “guilt by association” — a standard that has never been an accepted constitutional basis *993for a search. See Sibron v. New York, 392 U.S. 40, 88 S.Ct. 1889, 20 L.Ed.2d 917 (1968); People v. Foster, 788 P.2d 825 (Colo.1990); People v. Branin, 188 Colo. 235, 533 P.2d 1138 (1975); Mora v. People, 178 Colo. 279, 496 P.2d 1045 (1972).
Nor did the fact that on a prior occasion Agent Johnson observed the defendant and Marsh enter what Johnson referred to as a “head shop” constitute or contribute to a reasonable suspicion that the defendant was in possession of illegal drugs. Johnson’s characterization of a head shop as a store selling “legal drug paraphernalia” was without foundation in law or in fact. Colorado law does not recognize a form of drug paraphernalia that is “legal.” Drug paraphernalia is contraband and includes all equipment, products, and material used, intended for use, or designed for cultivating, producing, concealing, or ingesting illegal controlled substance. § 12-22-502(2), 5 C.R.S. (1989 Supp.). The possession, sale, or delivery of drug paraphernalia is a crime under Colorado law. §§ 12-22-504 & 505, 5 C.R.S. (1989 Supp). The record in this case is barren of any evidence establishing that the so-called “head shop” was engaged in the sale of drug paraphernalia. Under these circumstances, it reasonably should be presumed that the store in question, which was open to the public, was not engaged in the sale of illegal products. Moreover, Agent Johnson, as a matter of undisputed fact, never testified that he saw Marsh or the defendant purchase any item or engage in any illegal activity inside the store.
Similarly, the visit by the defendant and Marsh to the home of the co-lessee of the defendant’s storage locker did not serve to implicate the defendant, or the co-lessee for that matter, in illegal drug activity. It indeed would be a strange state of affairs if the defendant shared a storage locker with a stranger and did not visit occasionally with his co-lessee. Again, Agent Johnson witnessed nothing suggestive of any illegality during the defendant’s and Marsh’s visit to the home of the co-lessee.
The further fact that the defendant made frequent visits to his storage locker corn tributed nothing to the “reasonable suspicion” calculus, especially in light of Agent Johnson’s acknowledgement that this was not an unusual practice for a person leasing a storage locker. Finally, the defendant’s use of a backpack was of no more significance than was his use of a motorcycle as a means of transportation.
Where, as here, the trial court has applied the correct legal standard in resolving a suppression motion and the court’s ruling is supported by the factual state of the record, there is no basis in law or fact for this court to overturn the trial court’s resolution of the suppression motion. E.g., People v. Trujillo, 784 P.2d 788, 792 (Colo. 1990); People v. Quezada, 731 P.2d 730, 732 (Colo.1987). I therefore would affirm the suppression ruling.

. Two cases in which a dog sniff was determined not to be a search are readily distinguishable from the instant case. In State v. Slowikowski, 307 Or. 19, 761 P.2d 1315, 1320 (1988), the court held that "[t]here being no purposive intrusion into a protected area, there was no search." The court’s analysis turned on the fact that the police were conducting a training session for the dog at a mini-storage facility with the permission of the owner when marijuana was inadvertently discovered by the police. The marijuana was placed by the police in a locker and the dog was released to find it. The dog, however, alerted to a different locker which also contained marijuana. In United States v. Venema, 563 F.2d 1003, 1006 (10th Cir.1977), the court held that a dog sniff of a storage locker was not a search because the defendant lost any reasonable expectation of privacy when the manager of the facility warned him that from time to time she allowed the police on the premises and permitted them to use their dogs for detecting marijuana.