Court Opinion

ID: 9717943
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 07:13:18.410982+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:56.205973
License: Public Domain

ROBERTSON, J.,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent because the evidence will support no reasonable inference in favor of suppression. The State has demonstrated that Thomas entertained no reasonable expectation of privacy in the openly public transactions conducted in the campstore.
Upon review of the determination of the validity of a search, we consider the evidence favorable to the trial court's ruling and any uncontradicted contrary evidence. Stallings v. State (1987), Ind., 508 N.E.2d 550, 552. This Court will accept the trial court's findings of fact and conclusions unless clearly erroneous and will reverse the judgment only where the uncontradicted evidence will support no reasonable inference in favor of the ruling. State v. Jorgensen (1988), Ind.App., 526 N.E.2d 1004, 1006.
A search compromises the individual interest in privacy. See Horton v. California (1990), 496 U.S. 128, 133, 110 S.Ct. 2301, 2305-06, 110 L.Ed.2d 112. A search occurs when an expectation of privacy, which society is prepared to consider reasonable, is infringed. Soldal v. Cook County (1992), - U.S. -, -, 113 S.Ct. 538, 544, 121 L.Ed.2d 450 (quoting United States v. Jacobsen (1984), 466 U.S. 109, 113, 104 S.Ct. 1652, 1656, 80 L.Ed.2d 85). Although the concepts of property and tort law are useful in an evaluation of whether one has an expectation of privacy, those concepts do not control the analysis. See Rakas v. Illinois (1978), 489 U.S. 128, 148-144 n. 12, 99 S.Ct. 421, 430-431 n. 12, 58 L.Ed.2d 387. Our decision therefore does not depend upon whether Thomas had a "lease" or a "license" but upon whether he had a reasonable expectation of privacy in what was searched.
The State asserts that the video surveillance was not a search inasmuch as the conduct was openly exposed to members of the public who utilized the campstore. This is essentially a contention that society does not recognize Thomas's expectation of privacy as reasonable because the government's intrusion did not infringe upon the personal and societal values protected by the Fourth Amendment. See United States v. Cuevas-Sanchez (5th Cir.1985), 821 F.2d 248, 251 (quoting Oliver v. United States (1984), 466 U.S. 170, 182-183, 104 S.Ct. 1735, 1743-1744, 80 L.Ed.2d 214). The facts and the law compel me to agree with this position.
Thomas arguably entertained the subjective expectation that, when he locked the store at the end of the business day, he thereby excluded others, including the DNR, from entry into the building. The events videotaped inside the store, however, did not transpire during non-business hours. The *248subjects of the searches were the public, commercial transactions at the cash register during the business day. Under the cireum-stances, I must conclude that the uncontra-dicted evidence will support no reasonable inference in favor of the determination that Thomas entertained a reasonable expectation of privacy in the substance of those commercial transactions. While the license in question gave Thomas the right to use the interi- or of the building, arguably to the exclusion of the DNR and its agents, the license did not grant Thomas exclusive dominion over the commercial transactions in question, nor could it have done so. The camera videotaped commercial transactions which members of the public consummated on public land inside a public building. The transactions, by their nature, were public and not private.
For the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection ... But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected.
Katz v. United States (1967), 389 U.S. 347, 351, 88 S.Ct. 507, 511, 19 L.Ed.2d 576.
Thomas did not seek to exclude others from access to the transactions. See Katz, 389 U.S. at 352, 88 S.Ct. at 511-512 (But what he sought to exelude when he entered the [telephone] booth was not the intruding eye-it was the uninvited ear). He did not seek to preserve the transactions as private. Given the nature of the transactions, Thomas could not have preserved them as private even if he had sought to do so. The Heense required the commercial sales to be conducted in full view of the customers, and the record provides no indication that the events captured on the video tapes constituted anything less.
The majority has characterized my position as the view that the area was not searched because it was not a constitutionally protected area and that Thomas had no expectation of privacy on the licensed premises in that the recorded transactions occurred during business hours in a place accessible and visible to the public. This is altogether not my conclusion, as I do not base my opinion on an "open view" of the "common area" of the place searched. I have examined what Thomas knowingly exposed to the public, what he did not seek to keep private, that is, the substance of the commercial transactions.
The customers were additional parties to the transactions, and the videotape revealed nothing that questioning of the customers involved in those transactions would not also have revealed. The State compared the videotaped evidence with the cash register tape to establish that Thomas had engaged in transactions not recorded by the cash register. A subsequent interview with the camp-store's customers also would have shown that Thomas had engaged in transactions not recorded on the cash register tape. The record shows that Thomas openly exchanged merchandise for money with his customers. Regardless of the location from which the camera taped the events, Thomas had no reasonable expectation that these openly public transactions were, to the contrary, actually private.
While the majority bemoans that I ignore the surreptitious means by which the DNR accomplished the surveillance and the degree of intrusion inherent in the continuous nature of the surveillance, the majority has not addressed how it can characterize Thomas's expectations of privacy as reasonable when the State could have chosen to elicit information about the substance of the openly public transactions from the other parties to the events. I reject the notion that Thomas had a reasonable expectation in privacy in matters he shared with members of the public.
A legitimate expectation of privacy by definition means more than a subjective expectation of not being discovered. Rakas, 439 U.S. at 143-144 n. 12, 99 S.Ct. at 430-431 n. 12. Thomas may have entertained the subjective expectation that he would not be caught; but, in light of the manner in which he exposed the essential qualities of the transactions to the public, that expectation was not reasonable.
Searches conducted outside the judicial process, without prior approval by judge or *249magistrate, are per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment-subject only to a few specifically established and well delineated exceptions. See Minnesota v. Dickerson (1993), - U.S. -, -, 113 S.Ct. 2130, 2135, 124 L.Ed. 2d 334. The evidence and the reasonable inferences solely support the view that the State bore its burden to show its conduct fell within one of those well delineated exceptions. The video camera taped open, observable, public, unexcluded, commercial transactions.
Although the State's actions may be offensive to my personal notions of how it should have conducted its investigation, its actions are not offensive of the Fourth Amendment. Although "video surveillance ... 'could be grossly abused'," majority at p. 245, it was not grossly abused under the facts of this case.
Reasonableness is still the ultimate standard under the Fourth Amendment. Soldal, at -, 113 S.Ct. at 549. The reasonableness determination will reflect a careful balancing of governmental and private interests. Id.
The uncontradicted evidence will support no reasonable inference in favor of the position that Thomas's private interests outweigh the State's public and private interests discussed above. I would reverse the suppression.