Court Opinion

ID: 9701236
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 22:12:25.255092+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:21.307511
License: Public Domain

RAKER, Judge,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent. Because I believe that this Court’s extension of the United States Supreme Court’s holding in California v. Greenwood, 486 U.S. 35, 108 S.Ct. 1625, 100 *453L.Ed.2d 30 (1988), to a situation in which law enforcement officers trespass onto private property to remove garbage from within the curtilage6 of Respondent’s home is both unnecessary and unwise, I would affirm the decision of the Court of Special Appeals. To quote Chief Judge Posner, in his dissent in United States v. Redmon, 138 F.3d 1109, 1129 (7th Cir.1998), “[t]he better answer would be that searches, including searches of garbage, that take place within the curtilage of the defendant’s property must comply with the Fourth Amendment’s restrictions on searches.”
The Court of Special Appeals held that “the warrantless ‘trash runs’ at issue in this case violated appellant’s Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable governmental intrusion.” Sampson v. State, 130 Md.App. 79, 88, 744 A.2d 588, 593 (2000). Writing for the court, Chief Judge Murphy reasoned as follows:
Although a resident who places a trash bag out for collection has no Fourth Amendment protection against the trash collector picking up the bag and turning it over to the police, the Fourth Amendment does prohibit a law enforcement officer from making a warrantless seizure of a trash bag located within the curtilage of the residence.
Id. I agree.
In my view, when a person places in front of his or her home a securely tied, opaque trash bag on his or her property, that person maintains a reasonable expectation of privacy at least until the trash is taken away by the trash collector. Justice Brennan recognized the eminently private nature of a person’s trash in his dissent in Greenwood. He wrote:
A single bag of trash testifies eloquently to the eating, reading, and recreational habits of the person who produced it. A search of trash, like a search of the bedroom, can relate intimate details about sexual practices, health, and *454personal hygiene. Like rifling through desk drawers or intercepting phone calls, rummaging through trash can divulge the target’s financial and professional status, political affiliations and inclinations, private thoughts, personal relationships and romantic interests. It cannot be doubted that a sealed trash bag harbors telling evidence of the “intimate activity associated with the ‘sanctity of a man’s home and privacies of life....’”
Greenwood, 486 U.S. at 50, 108 S.Ct. 1625, 100 L.Ed.2d 80 (Brennan, J., dissenting).
In Greenwood, the Court held that the Fourth Amendment does not prohibit the warrantless search and seizure of garbage that has been left for collection outside of the curtilage of a home after it has been picked up by the regular neighborhood trash collector and turned over to the police. See id. at 37,108 S.Ct. 1625,100 L.Ed.2d 30. The State argues that this case presents a straightforward application of Greenwood, despite the fact that the Supreme Court, in that case, repeatedly emphasized that the defendant’s garbage had been left outside of the curtilage of his home and had been delivered to the police by the regular trash collector at the scheduled time of collection. See id. (“[Officer] Stracner asked the neighborhood’s regular trash collector to pick up the plastic garbage bags that Greenwood had left on the curb in front of his house and to turn the bags over to her .... ”); id. at 40, 108 S.Ct. 1625, 100 L.Ed.2d 30 (“It is common knowledge that plastic garbage bags left on or at the side of a public street are readily accessible to animals, children, scavengers, snoops, and other members of the public.”) (emphasis added); id. at 42, 108 S.Ct. 1625, 100 L.Ed.2d 30 (“[T]he overwhelming weight of authority rejects the proposition that a reasonable expectation of privacy exists with respect to trash discarded outside the home and the curtilege [sic] thereof.”) (quoting United States v. Thornton, 746 F.2d 39, 49 (D.C.Cir.1984)) (emphasis added); Greenwood, 486 U.S. at 42, 108 S.Ct. 1625, 100 L.Ed.2d 30 (“[0]f those state appellate courts that have considered the issue, the vast majority have held that the police may conduct warrantless searches and seizures of garbage discarded in public areas.” ) (emphasis added); id. at *45543-44, 108 S.Ct. 1625, 100 L.Ed.2d 30 (“[S]ociety as a whole possesses no such understanding with regard to garbage left for collection at the side of a public street. ”) (emphasis added). In fact, in framing the issue in the majority opinion, Justice White stated: “The issue here is whether the Fourth Amendment prohibits the warrantless search and seizure of garbage left for collection outside the curtilage of a home. ” Id. at 37, 108 S.Ct. 1625,100 L.Ed.2d 30 (emphasis added).
In this case, Respondent’s garbage was seized directly by the police from her front lawn rather than by the regular garbage collector who would have had her consent to be there. Furthermore, unlike the garbage in Greenwood, it was seized prior to regular collection, even though Respondent and her codefendant testified that they would sometimes retrieve items from the garbage after it had been placed out for collection.
Given these clear distinctions between the Supreme Court’s holding in Greenwood and this case, I have several reservations about the doctrinal and policy ramifications of extending Greenwood beyond its original holding. To begin with, the Court’s holding today erodes the important concept of curtilage as it exists in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence and the Maryland common law. In Oliver v. United States, 466 U.S. 170, 104 S.Ct. 1735, 80 L.Ed.2d 214 (1984), the Supreme Court first addressed the question of what role, if any, curtilage would still play in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence after the Court departed from the traditional framework of “constitutionally protected areas” to the reasonable expectation of privacy test enumerated in Justice Harlan’s concurring opinion in Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 361, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967) (Harlan, J., concurring). The Oliver Court reaffirmed the importance of the curtilage/open fields distinction for the purpose of reasonable expectation of privacy analysis by holding that Fourth Amendment protection was limited to the area immediately surrounding the home and did not include “open fields,” which it defined as the unoccupied or undeveloped area beyond the curtilage. See Oliver, 466 U.S. at 178, 180 n. 11, 181, 104 S.Ct. 1735, 80 L.Ed.2d 214.
*456In United States v. Dunn, 480 U.S. 294, 107 S.Ct. 1134, 94 L.Ed.2d 326 (1987), the Supreme Court articulated four factors that may be considered in determining whether a particular area is sufficiently associated with the intimate activities of the home to be considered within its curtilage and, therefore, entitled to the same Fourth Amendment protection as the home itself. Those four factors are: the proximity of the area to the home; whether the area is within an enclosure surrounding the home; the nature of the uses to which the area is put; and the steps taken to protect the area from observation by passers-by. See Dunn, 480 U.S. at 300-01, 107 S.Ct. 1134, 94 L.Ed.2d 326. The State emphasizes in this case the fact that Respondent’s front yard was unfenced and open to the public, but the Dunn Court made clear that the presence of a fence is not dispositive, stating: “Fencing considerations are important factors in defining the curtilage, ... but, ... the primary focus is whether the area sufficiently harbors those intimate activities associated with domestic life and the priva-cies of the home.” Id. at 301 n. 4, 107 S.Ct. 1134, 94 L.Ed.2d 326.
Maryland has also continued to recognize the concept of curtilage in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. In Everhart v. State, 274 Md. 459, 337 A.2d 100 (1975), while noting that, in Katz, the Supreme Court had rejected the trespass doctrine as a predicate to invocation of Fourth Amendment protection, this Court stated:
Thus, although it might seem more nearly constitutionally accurate that inquiry be made as to whether the place ... where the search and seizure was made from the plastic bag was within an area where [the defendant] had a reasonably ‘legitimate expectation of privacy,’ it would seem, a fortiori, that if there was an intrusion geographically within the curtilage it would be within such a protected area, notwithstanding the fact that such plastic bag may have been within the officers’ plain view.
Id. at 486, 337 A.2d at 115. We reasoned:
The curtilage is as much to be protected against unlawful searches and seizures without a warrant as the dwelling *457itself.... “Houses,” as within the protection of the Fourth Amendment, include the curtilage.... A yard or lawn is considered within the protection of the curtilage and the mere absence of a physical barrier such as a fence, gate or . hedge is not conclusive.
Id. at 484-85, 337 A.2d at 115.
In Brown v. State, 75 Md.App. 22, 540 A.2d 143 (1988), cert. denied, 313 Md. 31, 542 A.2d 858 (1988), the Court of Special Appeals held that the defendant’s back yard was within the curtilage of his home because it was surrounded by a fence, in close proximity to the home, and used for picnics, cookouts, and laundry, even though the defendant’s gate was open at the time that police entered his yard. See id. at 31, 540 A.2d at 147-48. The Court of Special Appeals also held that, since the back yard was not the same as a walkway or driveway, where visitors would ordinarily go, the police entry into the defendant’s curtilage was a trespass and, therefore, a search for Fourth Amendment purposes. See id. at 34-35, 540 A.2d at 149. The court stated that “the law of trespass is a consideration, although not dispositive, on the issue of whether there has been a violation of the Fourth Amendment.” Id. at 39, 540 A.2d at 151. The Court of Special Appeals further held that, when the defendant threw foil packets containing drug residue into his back yard, his actions did not constitute abandonment because “the property alleged to have been abandoned remained physically located in an area where he not only retained dominion but also had a reasonable expectation of privacy.” Id. at 36, 540 A.2d at 150.
This central role of curtilage in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence is not only not inconsistent with the reasonable expectation of privacy analysis generated by Katz, but complements it. As Judge Posner explained in his dissent in Red-mon:
[Ejver since the invention of wiretapping, which is a non-trespassory invasion of home or office, emphasis in the interpretation and application of the Fourth Amendment has shifted from the protection of property to the protection *458of privacy. The emphasis that the courts have given to the distinction between “curtilage” and “open fields,” and to the association of the former concept with intimacy, are instances of this refocusing of concern from the protection of property to the protection of privacy.... “Because expectations of privacy derive in part from the right to exclude others from the property in question, lawful possession is an important consideration in determining whether a defendant had a legitimate expectation of privacy in the area searched.”
Redmon, 138 F.3d at 1130-31 (Posner, J., dissenting) (internal citations omitted).
In applying the Dunn factors to this case, while keeping in mind that the primary inquiry is whether Respondent’s front yard harbored “intimate activities associated with domestic life and the privacies of the home,” it seems clear that the area of her front yard invaded by the officers in this case was within the curtilage of her home and, therefore, entitled to Fourth Amendment protection. Respondent’s garbage was seized from the small lawn in the “shallow front yard,” maj. op. at 441, of the residential home that she rented. In fact, the majority concedes that the tree against which Respondent’s garbage was placed was in “close proximity” to her house. Maj. op. at 442 n. 2.
The area in question is entirely unlike the marijuana fields in the woods behind the defendants’ farms in Oliver or the commercial barn area behind the defendant’s ranch house in Dunn and much more similar to the residential yards in Everhart and Brown. The Supreme Court, in Dunn, repeatedly pointed out that the area at issue in that case was “unoccupied” and “undeveloped.” See Dunn, 480 U.S. at 304, 107 S.Ct. 1134, 94 L.Ed.2d 326. As the majority concedes:
In the Dunn case itself, the Court held that a bam on a 198-acre ranch, located inside a perimeter fence but 50 yards outside the fence surrounding the ranch house, was not within the curtilage of the house. That is, of course, a far cry from the situation now before us — a shallow front *459lawn in front of the house, upon which respondent’s children regularly played.
Maj. op. at 442 n. 2. In this case, Respondent’s front yard is in close proximity to her home, is used regularly by her family for recreational activities, and is clearly closely associated with the private activities of her home life. While there is no fence surrounding the part of Respondent’s yard from which the garbage was taken, that fact alone is not dispositive of whether she had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the area invaded. See Everhart, 274 Md. at 484, 387 A.2d at 115. Furthermore, while the trial court did not make a clear finding on the issue, there is evidence in the record to suggest that there were “No Trespassing” signs posted to protect Respondent’s property at the time that the garbage was seized by the police.
The majority recognizes that this case differs from Greenwood in that the garbage was taken from within the curtilage of the home, see maj. op. at 441-43, but concludes, without further explanation, that the distinction is not “significant.” See id. Oliver and Dunn and their progeny, as well as Everhait and Brown, would seem to suggest the contrary. The majority suggests that no courts have interpreted Greenwood as being limited to containers placed outside of the curtilage or first picked up by the regular trash collector, see maj. op. at 450, but that is not correct.
In United States v. Certain Real Property Located at 987 Fisher Rd., 719 F.Supp. 1396 (E.D.Mich.1989), the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan suppressed evidence seized as a result of a warrantless entry by police upon the curtilage of the defendant’s real property to search and seize garbage set out in the back yard for ordinary garbage collection. See id. The court held that “[a]t the time the police officer entered the curtilage and seized the closed garbage bags from the rear of the house, the claimants retained an expectation of privacy in the bags in that area that society would recognize as reasonable,” id. at 1404, and that, therefore, the police had “engaged in a ‘search and seizure’ within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment....” Id. at *4601406. The court explained that “the doctrine of curtilage changes the complexion of fourth amendment analysis” and that “the location of the garbage — whether within or outside of the curtilage” was “particularly important.” Id. at 1402. The court reasoned:
The location of the closed garbage bags within the curtilage of 987 Fisher Road, as opposed to the curbside, heightens a person’s expectation of privacy in those bags as long as they remain in that area. On a continuum, nobody can retain a reasonable expectation of privacy in garbage that is at a garbage dump; in Greenwood, the Supreme Court held that any privacy expectation in garbage at a curbside is also not reasonable. Garbage bags close to home — in a garage waiting to be set out by the curbside, within the curtilage, or in a back porch — can engender privacy expectations. While the garbage bags remained within the curtilage, the claimants retained control over them and could have retrieved them or items contained in them. It is not unheard of for people to retrieve a newspaper or sales slip that had been mistakenly thrown away.
Id. at 1404-05.
More importantly, the question of whether Greenwood’s holding is limited to garbage placed outside of the curtilage of the home is not the appropriate inquiry. The fact that Respondent may lack a reasonable expectation of privacy in her garbage does not change the fact that she has a reasonable expectation of privacy in her front yard. The Court in Greenwood did not approve of the warrantless search of the defendant’s garbage because of its nature as garbage, but rather because it had been discarded in a publicly accessible area and conveyed to a third party, thus rendering any subjective expectation of privacy in it objectively unreasonable. See Greenwood, 486 U.S. at 40-41, 108 S.Ct. 1625, 100 L.Ed.2d 30. As Judge Posner explained in Redmon:
The Fourth Amendment confers a right to security of person, home, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures. It is tempting to suppose that the search of a garbage can could never violate that right *461because the act of discarding something as trash or garbage is a relinquishment of any interest in it. But that answer must be wrong, as it would entitle the police to enter the home itself and rifle the trash cans and wastepaper baskets found there....
Redmon, 188 F.3d at 1129 (Posner, J., dissenting) (internal citations omitted). Professor LaFave explains:
[T]he Greenwood majority seems to view [the fact that the garbage was publicly accessible] as rather critical, for the Court repeatedly refers to the issue and holding in the case in terms of garbage “outside the curtilage,” “on or at the side of a public street,” “at the curb,” “in an area accessible to the public,” and “in public areas.” ... TPlolice have only limited authority to come onto the curtilage, for they must conduct themselves as would an ordinary social visitor to the premises. That hardly includes rummaging through the garbage cans of one’s host.
Wayne R. LaFave, Search and Seizure § 2.6(c), at 594-95 (3rd ed. 1996) (Pocket Part 2001) (footnotes omitted). A more appropriate inquiry, therefore, would be whether courts continue to treat the distinction between curtilage and open fields as significant for Fourth Amendment purposes, which they clearly do. See, e.g., United States v. Jenkins, 124 F.3d 768, 771 (6th Cir. 1997) (holding that the warrantless physical invasion and seizure of items from the defendants’ back yard violated the Fourth Amendment because the back yard was part of the curtilage of their home, based on the fact that the back yard was small and immediately accessible from a sliding glass door in the back of the house, well-tended, used for gardening and laundry, and shielded by the house and woods); State v. Rogers, 161 Vt. 236, 638 A.2d 569, 573 (1993) (holding that a marijuana garden was within the curtilage of the home because the area was 150 feet from the home, within a natural tree barrier, and was also used for vegetable gardening, but that police observation of the garden was not a “search” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment because the police did not physically penetrate the garden); State v. Lange, 158 Wis.2d 609, 463 N.W.2d 390, 391 (App.1990) (holding that a *462garden from which a marijuana bud was seized was within the curtilage of the defendant’s property because it was within ten yards of the home, within a tree boundary, and was used for laundry and vegetable gardening and that curtilage is automatically entitled to Fourth Amendment protection).
Furthermore, the majority opinion ignores the importance of the property concept of trespass in determining the objective reasonableness of a defendant’s expectation of privacy under the Katz framework. While the Supreme Court, in Katz, specifically rejected the trespass doctrine as singularly defining the scope of Fourth Amendment protections, see Katz, 389 U.S. at 353, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576, the Court also has repeatedly reiterated that trespass is one factor to be considered in determining whether an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in a particular area. See Oliver, 466 U.S. at 183, 104 S.Ct. 1735, 80 L.Ed.2d 214 (“The existence of a property right is but one element in determining whether expectations of privacy are legitimate.”). The fact that the search and seizure of garbage in this case occurred only as the result of a police trespass into the curtilage of Respondent’s home indicates that she had a significantly more legitimate expectation of privacy, both subjectively and objectively, than the defendant in Greenwood. As Professor La-Fave explains:
As for the [rationale that the garbage had been conveyed to the trash collector] given in Greenwood, that might support the conclusion the police can enlist the aid of the garbage hauler even as to garbage within the curtilage, but it hardly means that the police may themselves intrude. There is no principle in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence to the effect that the police are free to do what some individual has been authorized to do.
LaFave, supra, § 2.6(c), at 595 (footnotes omitted). As he further notes: “In coming onto the curtilage and taking the trash, the collector is doing exactly what the householder contemplated.” LaFave, supra, § 2.6(c), at 602. Therefore, Professor LaFave concludes:
*463Thus, when the police come on to private property to conduct an investigation or for some other legitimate purpose and restrict their movements to places visitors could be expected to go (e.g., walkways, driveways, porches), observations made from such vantage points are not covered by the Fourth Amendment. But other portions of the lands adjoining the residence are protected, and thus if the police go upon these other portions and make observations there, this amounts to a Fourth Amendment search, and this is so even if these other portions are themselves clearly visible from outside the curtilage.
LaFave, supra, § 2.3(f), at 506-09 (footnotes omitted).
Judge Posner made a similar point in his Redmon dissent:
Most homeowners extend an implicit invitation to social and business invitees to walk up to the front door, but in doing so the homeowner does not, as it were, “waive curtilage.” The social and business invitee, including a police officer whether invited or uninvited, must confine himself to the prescribed route, rather than treating the invitation as one to roam the property at will, peering in to the windows of the home.
Redmon, 138 F.3d at 1130 (Posner, J., dissenting) (citations omitted).
As the United States Court of Appeal for the Eighth Circuit explained in United States v. Biondich, 652 F.2d 743 (8th Cir.1981):
A person ordinarily retains some expectation of privacy in items that remain on his or her property, regardless of whether they are placed in an automobile, a home, or a garbage can. When a person makes arrangements with a sanitation service to have the items picked up, however, and when the items are placed in the designated place for collection and the regular collector makes the pickup in the usual manner on the scheduled collection day, the person loses his or her legitimate expectation of privacy in the items at the time they are taken off his or her premises.
*464Id. at 745 (emphasis added). See State v. Hauser, 342 N.C. 382, 464 S.E.2d 443, 447 (1995) (upholding warrantless garbage search by police, but only because it occurred “after pickup by the regular collector in the normal manner” because “the defendant retained no legitimate expectation of privacy in his garbage once it left his yard in the usual manner.”). Furthermore, the fact that the police made a specific point of not stepping on Respondent’s lawn, but rather reached over her lawn from the sidewalk to the garbage that was placed two or three feet inside her property line, suggests that even the investigating officers recognized a significance in Respondent’s property line. Unfortunately, they failed to recognize that a trespass occurs whenever the vertical plane of the property fine is breached. See Restatment (second) op torts, § 159 cmt. f, illus. 3 (1965).
In addition, the Court’s holding today, and its failure to establish any bright line rule for Fourth Amendment purposes, pose serious administrative complications for law enforcement officers seeking to perform warrantless garbage searches on private property in the future. In Oliver, the Supreme Court reaffirmed the doctrinal significance of the distinction between curtilage and open fields, in part, because of concerns about the practical administration for law enforcement officers of a more case-by-case approach to determining whether or not defendants had a reasonable expectation of privacy in open fields:
Nor would a case-by-case approach provide a workable accommodation between the needs of law enforcement and the interests protected by the Fourth Amendment. Under this approach, police officers would have to guess before every search whether landowners had erected fences sufficiently high, posted a sufficient number of warning signs, or located contraband in an area sufficiently secluded to establish a right of privacy.... This Court repeatedly has acknowledged the difficulties created for courts, police, and citizens by ad hoc, case-by-case definition of Fourth Amendment standards to be applied in differing factual circumstances .... The ad hoc approach not only makes it difficult *465for the policeman to discern the scope of his authority, ... it also creates a danger that constitutional rights will be arbitrarily and inequitably enforced.
Oliver, 466 U.S. at 181, 104 S.Ct. 1735, 80 L.Ed.2d 214 (internal citations omitted). The Supreme Court concluded by pointing out:
The clarity of the open fields doctrine ... is not sacrificed ... by our recognition that the curtilage remains within the protections of the Fourth Amendment. Most of the many millions of acres that are “open fields” are not close to any structure and so not arguably within the curtilage. And, for most homes, the boundaries of the curtilage will be clearly marked; and the conception defining the curtilage — as the area around the home to which the activity of home life extends — is a familiar one easily understood from our daily experience.
Id. at 182 n. 12,104 S.Ct. 1735, 80 L.Ed.2d 214.
The majority opinion fails to heed the Oliver Court’s warnings. It leaves no guidance for law enforcement officers on the permissible scope of “trash runs” in the future, nor even any clear doctrinal rule for when an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in containers located on his or her private property. The majority seems to suggest that garbage placed next to a house or garage would not be “sufficiently accessible to the public to make an expectation of privacy unreasonable,” maj. op. at 449-50 (emphasis added), but also holds that cans that are “close enough to the sidewalk to be readily accessible to the public and thus knowingly exposed,” id. (emphasis added), are not protected by the Fourth Amendment. The majority suggests that application of the bright line curtilage test “lacks any reasonable basis and would lead to wholly irrational results,” maj. op. at 451, disdaining “ ‘measuring expectations of privacy with a ruler.’ ” Maj. op. at 451 (quoting State v. Herrick, 567 N.W.2d 336, 340 (N.D.1997)). But that criticism applies with greater force to the rule established today by the majority. The test that the majority seems to institute for whether an individual has a *466reasonable expectation of privacy in garbage containers on his or her private property is whether those containers are sufficiently “close to the house.” Id. at 450. In contrast, the police are already constrained by the curtilage test in other Fourth Amendment contexts; there is no reason to develop an independent jurisprudence simply based on the nature of the seized evidence — namely, garbage.
The clear distinction between open fields and curtilage has long been recognized in federal and Maryland common law and has been repeatedly applied in the Fourth Amendment context. It seems unnecessary, at this point, to abandon that concept and with it any hope of establishing a bright line rule for the permissibility of warrantless garbage searches. Under the reasoning of Katz, it also seems substantially more likely that society would be willing objectively to recognize a legitimate expectation of privacy in anything, including garbage, that begins at the curtilage and lasts until removal by the garbage collector.
As the U.S. District Court in 987 Fisher Rd. opined when it suppressed the evidence received from the claimant’s trash:
The court queries whether allowing police one step within the curtilage to search and seize garbage bags allows the next step through the door. The court believes that that step should not have been taken under the facts of this case.... [T]he government decided to do directly what it already could do indirectly, and that trip up the side driveway makes all the difference for fourth amendment purposes.
987 Fisher Rd., 719 F.Supp. at 1407.
Judge Posner expressed similar concerns in his dissent in Redmon:
[Rjather than subject the police to the uncertainty of guessing where we will ultimately draw the line, we should adhere to the distinction between the curtilage and open fields, and permit no garbage searches, without a warrant or probable cause, within the curtilage.... [T]he best rule, the one that best reconciles the interests of privacy, crime *467control, and ease of administration, is the one that I have suggested — drawing the line at the curtilage.
Redmon, 138 F.3d at 1132 (Posner, J., dissenting).
I would affirm the decision of the Court of Special Appeals that the warrantless garbage searches and seizures at issue in this case violated Respondent’s Fourth Amendment rights. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.
Chief Judge BELL and Judge ELDRIDGE have authorized me to state that they join in this dissent.

. An area is considered part of the curtilage of a dwelling house if it "is so intimately tied to the home itself that it should be placed under the home’s ‘umbrella’ of Fourth Amendment protection.” United States v. Dunn, 480 U.S. 294, 301, 107 S.Ct. 1134, 94 L.Ed.2d 326 (1987).