Court Opinion

ID: 9709043
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 03:38:43.823967+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:45.535456
License: Public Domain

ROBERTS, Justice,
dissenting.
The majority concludes that State Police officers lawfully opened, searched, and seized appellant Bruce Latshaw’s closed boxes and footlockers and their contents, even though no magistrate ever made an independent determination that probable cause supported the governmental intrusion. The majority justifies today’s exception from the well-settled warrant requirement of both the federal and Pennsylvania Constitutions on the theory that Minnie Bubb, owner of the barn in which the closed boxes and footlockers were found, but not the owner of these storage containers, could “consent” to the officers’ opening of the containers. I dissent.
Minnie Bubb called police to investigate the possibility that marijuana was being stored on her premises. After police arrived at the farm, she gave the officers a plastic bag containing a substance resembling marijuana. Bubb had *309found the substance in the hayloft of her barn. With the help of Bubb, the officers found the closed boxes and footlockers in the hayloft. With her permission they opened them. Five days later, police arrested Robert Hinds and charged him with possession of marijuana. Hinds and his wife, Bubb’s niece, lived on the farm, renting and sharing with Bubb the nearby farmhouse. Police then arrested appellant Bruce Latshaw. Appellant had stored the closed boxes and footlockers pursuant to an agreement with Hinds, who Bubb permitted to store articles in the barn.
Even were it assumed, as the majority concludes, that appellant could harbor no reasonable expectation that persons with lawful access to the barn would not visit the hayloft, it cannot be concluded that the officers’ warrantless opening of appellant’s storage containers was lawful. Nothing in the record demonstrates that Minnie Bubb, or any other person, shared access to appellant’s closed storage containers. Indeed, Minnie Bubb placed the officers on clear, unmistakable notice that she had no interest in the storage containers. Thus, while appellant might have risked that persons with lawful access to the barn would find and view his storage containers, he did not in any respect give up the privacy interest manifested upon closing the boxes and footlockers to the outside world.
United States v. Chadwick, 433 U.S. 1, 97 S.Ct. 2476, 53 L.Ed.2d 538 (1977), dispels any doubt concerning the reasonableness of appellant’s expectation of privacy in his closed boxes and footlockers he stored in Minnie Bubb’s barn. There, federal narcotics agents without a warrant opened a footlocker the respondents were publicly transporting. Mr. Chief Justice Burger, speaking for the Court, invalidated the warrantless governmental intrusion. He stated:
“By placing personal effects inside a double-locked footlocker, respondents manifested an expectation that the contents would remain free from public examination. No less than one who locks the doors of his home against intruders, one who safeguards his personal possessions in this manner is due the protection of the Fourth Amend*310ment Warrant Clause. There being no exigency, it was unreasonable for the Government to conduct this search without the safeguards a judicial warrant provides.”
Id., 433 U.S. at 11, 97 S.Ct. at 2483. The Court rejected any notion that respondents’ public exposure of the footlockers vitiated the reasonableness of respondents’ expectation of privacy. “[T]he Fourth Amendment ‘protects people, not places,’ Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351, 88 S.Ct. 507, 511, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967); more particularly, it protects people from unreasonable government intrusions into their legitimate expectations of privacy.” United States v. Chadwick, 433 U.S. at 7, 97 S.Ct. at 2481.
Commonwealth v. Platou, 455 Pa. 258, 312 A.2d 29 (1973), compels the conclusion that the officers’ warrantless opening of the closed storage containers violated the fourth amendment and the Pennsylvania Constitution. In Platou, police had a valid warrant authorizing the search of the apartment of Robert Wander. Upon executing the warrant, the officers found suitcases belonging to Platou. Even though the warrant did not authorize a search of the suitcases, and even though Platou informed the officers that the suitcases were his, the officers searched their contents. In invalidating the search of Platou’s suitcases, this Court concluded:
“The Fourth Amendment guarantees that ‘[t]he right of the people to secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated . . ..’[*] A person does not lose the protection of the Fourth Amendment by entering the apartment of another. Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 352, 88 S.Ct. 507, 511, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967); Jones v. *311United States, 362 U.S. 257, 261-67, 80 S.Ct. 725, 731-34, 4 L.Ed.2d 697 (1960); Reece, supra. Neither do a person’s effects. The Fourth Amendment permits no lesser protection for a person’s effects, than for his person. So long as a person seeks to preserve his effects as private, even if they are accessible to the public or to others, they are constitutionally protected. Katz, supra at 351, 88 S.Ct. at 511. Stated differently, a person must maintain the privacy of his possessions in such a fashion that his ‘expectations of freedom from intrusion are recognized as reasonable.’ Id. at 361, 88 S.Ct. at 517 (HARLAN, J., concurring).
Personal belongings brought by their owner on a visit to a friend’s house retain their constitutional protection until their owner meaningfully abdicates control or responsibility. Appellant’s placing his suitcases on the floor of Wander’s apartment and opening one of them does not amount to an abandonment of his control. Appellant maintained his reasonable expectation of privacy. And therefore the search of his suitcases was unreasonable and constitutionally impermissible.”
Id., 455 Pa. at 266-67, 312 A.2d at 34 (footnote renumbered).
Both here and in Platou, the officers may have lawfully been in a position to observe persons’ effects. But in both instances neither person subjected to the warrantless governmental intrusion relinquished any reasonable expectation of privacy in their belongings. In examining Platou’s personal effects, police were fully aware they were exceeding the scope of their warrant to search Robert Wander’s premises. So too here, the officers knew that Bubb had no control over the contents of the closed cartons. She expressly disavowed their ownership, the storage containers were located in a place where property is not likely to be abandoned, and Bubb made no claim to exclusive control of the barn. No less than in Platou, appellant’s reasonable expectation of privacy must prevail.
The majority never addresses whether its conclusion is consistent with Platou, even though appellant argues that Platou is controlling. Moreover, the majority ignores Chad*312wick. Also ignored by the majority is Commonwealth v. Silo, 480 Pa. 15, 389 A.2d 62 (1978). There, a hospital nurse, upon the request of police officers, took the personal effects of Jerome Silo from the hospital in which Silo was located and turned them over to police. In invalidating this warrantless police seizure, this Court unanimously concluded:
“[T]he narrow issue in the instant case is whether it can be said that the nurse had mutual use and joint access or control over appellant’s clothing. The mere statement of the issue suggests the answer. Although it may be conceded arguendo that the nurse had joint access and control to appellant’s clothing, there was clearly no right to mutual use of the clothing by the nurse or any other member of the hospital staff. The nurse’s access to and control of appellant’s clothing were for the purposes of safeguarding these effects, not for the purpose of using them. We therefore reject the argument that the nurse’s consent validated the seizure of appellant’s clothing.”
Id., 480 Pa. at 23, 389 A.2d at 66. Like Platou and Chadwick, Silo is controlling.
In Chadwick, Mr. Chief Justice Burger reaffirmed the role of the warrant in our constitutional scheme:
“[T]he judicial warrant has a significant role to play in that it provides the detached scrutiny of a neutral magistrate, which is a more reliable safeguard against improper searches than the hurried judgment of a law enforcement officer ‘engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime.’ Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 14, 68 S.Ct. 367, 369, 92 L.Ed. 436 (1948). Once a lawful search has begun, it is also far more likely that it will not exceed proper bounds when it is done pursuant to judicial authorization ‘particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.’ Further, a warrant assures the individual whose property is searched or seized of the lawful authority of the executing officer, his need to search, and the limits of his power to search. Camara v. Municipal Court, 387 U.S. 523, 532, 87 S.Ct. 1727, 1732, 18 L.Ed.2d 930 (1967).”
*313United States v. Chadwick, supra 433 U.S. at 9, 97 S.Ct. at 2482. Absent proper consent, it must be concluded that, consistent with Chadwick, Platou, Silo, and the established law of search and seizure, state police officers’ warrantless opening of appellant’s closed boxes and footlockers was unlawful under the fourth amendment and Pennsylvania Constitution.
I would reverse judgment of sentence and grant appellant a new trial.
O’BRIEN and MANDERINO, JJ., join in this dissenting opinion.

 [Footnote 11 in original] “ ‘The wording of article I, section 8 of the Pennsylvania Constitution is only slightly different. “The people shall be secure in their persons, houses, papers and possessions from unreasonable searches and seizures . . . ” In note 2 of Platou, 455 Pa. at 260 n. 2, 312 A.2d at 31 n. 2, we stated: “Our discussion of the Fourth Amendment is equally applicable to the state constitutional provisions.” See Pennsylvania v. Platou, 417 U.S. 976, 94 S.Ct. 3183, 41 L.Ed.2d 1146 (1974) (Supreme Court of the United States denying certiorari, “it appearing that the judgment below rests upon an adequate state ground”).