Court Opinion

ID: 9468035
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:02:25.756689+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:40:38.673884
License: Public Domain

FLETCHER, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
From a review of the facts, I believe that defendants exhibited a subjective expectation of privacy which society should be prepared to recognize as reasonable, Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 361, 88 S.Ct. 507, 516, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967) (Harlan, J., concurring). Accordingly, I dissent.
Defendants had paid the rent to the end of their unexpired lease period, had left valuable items in the apartment, had not yet forfeited their cleaning deposit, had not surrendered keys or advised the landlord that they had vacated, and did in fact return to the apartment. All but the last of these facts were known to the landlord at the time of the search, and were conveyed by the landlord to the government agents.
The only facts suggesting abandonment were that the apartment’s door had been open for a period of several hours the previous day until closed by the landlord, that the landlord’s note had not been removed from the door, and that the apartment was in considerable disarray. I cannot agree that these facts give rise to a reasonable belief that the apartment had been abandoned. To the contrary, they are at least as consistent with the conclusion that defend*1083ants were in the last stages of vacating their apartment before the expiration of their tenancy. If the government agents had no reasonable belief that the apartment was abandoned, the fact that the apartment door had been left open would not justify their intrusion. Wilson v. Health & Hospital Corp., 620 F.2d 1201 (7th Cir. 1980). I would reverse.