Court Opinion

ID: 9613926
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:20:54.749764+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:03:33.256172
License: Public Domain

MR. CHIEF JUSTICE HASWELL and MR. JUSTICE HARRISON
dissenting:
We would reverse the judgment of the District Court.
The majority has concluded that defendant had a reasonable expectation of privacy. They have determined that the electronic monitoring of defendant’s conversation with Milsten and Sherlock violated Art. II, Section 10, 1972 Montana Constitution. We disagree.
We do not believe that defendant had a reasonable expectation of privacy during his conversation with Milsten and Sherlock. The entire conversation took place in the parking lot of the Tempo Shopping Center. Anyone who was walking or driving by could have overheard defendant allegedly intimidate Milsten and Sherlock. As *118that is the case, defendant could not have justifiably relied on an expectation of privacy.
In Katz, the Supreme Court found that the defendant justifiably relied on an expectation of privacy, when his conversation took place on the phone, in a public phone booth. That case is clearly distinguishable from the present one. It cannot be argued that when a person goes into a phone booth closes the door, and uses the telephone for his conversation that he did not expect some privacy. However, the same is not true with a conversation conducted outside, in the parking lot of a shopping center, where the general public could overhear. In our view, there can be no expectation of privacy in those circumstances.
The majority has recognized that the Fourth Amendment protects people and not places. The same is true with Art. II, Section 10, 1972 Montana Constitution. This provision of our constitution protects people and not places. However, like the Fourth Amendment, Art. II, Section 10, does not protect what a person exposes to the public.
In this case, defendant exposed his conversation to the public because of the manner in which he conducted the conversation. Thus, he should not be allowed to express the recordings of this conviction based upon an alleged invasion of his right to privacy, a right he himself had abandoned.