Court Opinion

ID: 9491038
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:02:04.610934+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:28.551863
License: Public Domain

COFFEY, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I join and concur in Judge Hariington Wood’s well-reasoned analysis as set forth in the majority opinion. Redmon’s garbage simply does not fall within the scope of protection that the Fourth Amendment accords persons, their houses, papers and effects. I write separately to briefly extend several remarks on an issue that appears to have engendered some debate among various members of this Court; namely, whether abandonment theory, that is, the concept of voluntarily and intentionally relinquishing one’s property right in a discarded res, continues to thrive in our Fourth Amendment “garbage” jurisprudence. I think it does, and the majority as well as Judge Flaum seem to agree with me, whereas Judge Rov-ner opines that the theory has “crept into the majority’s analysis” (Rovner, J., concurring at 55), thus claiming that its day came to pass with the Supreme Court’s decision in California v. Greenwood, 486 U.S. 35, 108 S.Ct. 1625, 100 L.Ed.2d 30 (1988).
Initially, I am forced to disagree with my esteemed dissenting colleague, for the Greenwood Court never expressly, nor impliedly for that matter, rejected the abandonment theory.1 Try as one might, no one is able to point to a single passage in the Greenwood majority opinion that suggests otherwise. Instead, Judge Rovner grasps at the passing observations of Greenwood’s two dissenting Justices, who tell us that “[t]he Court prop*1120erly rejects the State’s attempt to distinguish trash searches from other searches on the theory that trash is abandoned and therefore not entitled to an expectation of privacy,” Id. at 51,108 S.Ct. at 1634 (Brennan, J., dissenting), and then go on to quote from another dissent for the proposition that “ ‘property interest [in trash] does not settle the matter for Fourth Amendment purposes, for the reach of the Fourth Amendment is not determined by state property law.’ ” Id. (quoting California v. Rooney, 483 U.S. 307, 320, 107 S.Ct. 2852, 2859, 97 L.Ed.2d 258 (1987) (White, J., dissenting)). With all due respect, the majority in Greenwood spoke for itself, and I am quite certain that none of its number were interested in having the dissenters write on their behalf. The Greenwood dissent is indeed an exceedingly small hook upon which Fourth Amendment abandonment critics can hang their hats.
In my view, the theory of abandonment survived Greenwood, and is alive, well and flourishing in our Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. Simply stated, if it is the customary practice for an individual to deposit his garbage in a receptacle and leave it in a particular place for pick-up by public or private trash collectors, he has manifested an intent to abandon his refuse at such point in time .that he leaves it unsecured in that place. See, e.g., United States v. Shelby, 573 F.2d 971, 973 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 439 U.S. 841, 99 S.Ct. 132, 58 L.Ed.2d 139 (1978) (“In our view the placing of trash in the garbage cans at the time and place for anticipated collection by public employees for hauling to a public dump signifies abandonment.”). Thus, the intent to relinquish ownership and abandon trash is tantamount to “throwing away” a subjective expectation of privacy in it that society accepts as objectively reasonable. In short, when it comes to abandoned property, “I know it when I see it,” Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184, 197, 84 S.Ct. 1676, 1683, 12 L.Ed.2d 793 (1964) (Stewart, J., concurring) (identifying what constitutes “obscene” material), and when the police see abandoned garbage which has been left .unsecured in its usual place and at its usual time for collection, it is theirs for the taking.

. I add that the panel in United States v. Hedrick, 922 F.2d 396 (7th Cir.1991), did not extol that abandonment theory is inapplicable in Fourth Amendment cases, but only stated that its continued viability was “questionable.”