Court Opinion

ID: 9565440
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:21:14.752915+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:19:38.789910
License: Public Domain

BURNETT, J.,
specially concurring.
The court’s opinion necessarily addresses a broad spectrum of issues. I write separately to highlight our treatment of the initial, warrantless police entry upon Kelly’s land.
In this case the state has argued that because the marijuana was cultivated in a field within view of a public highway, it was not in a place where a reasonable expectation of privacy could attach. Therefore, the marijuana could be removed without implicating the fourth amendment, even though the seizure was accomplished by a warrantless entry and trespass upon private property. This argument embraces two propositions. The first, which we have accepted, is that if an object on private property is exposed to public view, a law enforcement officer who observes it has not engaged in a “search” under the fourth *280amendment. The second proposition, which we have rejected, is that if observing the object does not constitute a “search,” then the acts of entering the property and taking the object cannot constitute a “seizure” within the fourth amendment.
The privacy interests implicated by a search are not invariably the same as those implicated by a seizure. Each must be examined to determine whether a reasonable expectation of privacy has been infringed. Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967). A reasonable expectation as to what places the public can see does not delimit a reasonable expectation as to what places the public can enter. A person who exposes things to public view in an open area cannot claim that a reasonable expectation of privacy has been infringed when those things are in fact observed. But it does not follow that the same person has forfeited any reasonable expectation that the public will refrain from entering his private property. Lands open to public view are not necessarily open to public entry.
This fundamental point has been recognized by the United States Supreme Court. In Air Pollution Variance Bd. v. Western Alfalfa, 416 U.S. 861, 94 S.Ct. 2114, 40 L.Ed.2d 607 (1974), the Court held that the fourth amendment was not violated when an air quality inspector went upon the outdoor premises of a business establishment, without its knowledge or consent, to conduct a test of smoke emissions visible to the public. But the Court carefully noted that the record did not show the inspector had gone “on premises from which the public was excluded____” Id. at 865, 94 S.Ct. at 2116. Western Alfalfa demonstrates that the openness of incriminating evidence to public view does not, of itself, cloak a law enforcement officer with authority to make a warrantless entry upon private property from which the public is excluded.
The Supreme Court implicitly has acknowledged a distinction betwéen narrow privacy interests in-lands where the public is permitted and broader privacy interests in lands from which the public is excluded. This distinction suggests a balance between fourth amendment values and effective law enforcement where privacy interests in open lands are asserted. Today we have defined that balance as it relates specifically to a poorly fenced, unposted farm field. By rejecting Kelly’s claim of a reasonable expectation of privacy, we have avoided extending the fourth amendment to lands where substantial indicia of a privacy interest cannot be found. At the same time, by refusing categorically to deny fourth amendment protection to all “open fields,” as urged by the state, we have preserved fourth amendment values in those cases where legitimate privacy interests can be shown.