Court Opinion

ID: 9665351
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 00:45:48.413076+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:15.023060
License: Public Domain

CLINTON, Judge,
dissenting.
The Fourth Amendment claim discerned by the Supreme Court in Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735, 99 S.Ct. 2577, 61 L.Ed.2d 220 (1979) was that Smith “had a ‘legitimate expectation of privacy’ regarding the numbers he dialed on his phone,” id., U.S. at 741, 99 S.Ct. at 2581. The nub of the matter was found in this:
“ When he used his phone, petitioner voluntarily conveyed numerical information to the telephone company and “exposed” that information to its equipment in the ordinary course of business. In so doing, petitioner assumed the risk that the company would reveal to police the numbers he dials.”1
Id., at 744, 99 S.Ct. at 2582. Accordingly, it was concluded that “petitioner in all probability entertained no actual expectation of privacy in the phone numbers he dialed, and *387that, even if he did, his expectation was not ‘legitimate,’ ” id., at 745, 99 S.Ct. at 2583.
In the case at bar the appellants affirmatively displayed such trappings of security, which objectively indicated expectations of privacy, that his observations of them evoked the curiosity of Deputy Sheriff Gordon Morris to the extent that he or other peace officers unsuccessfully tried binoculars from one mile away, a night vision telescope, helicopters and aerial photography to intrude on the privacy of citizens and their premises. Finally, when all else failed, they acquired a 600 mm telephoto lens, and began to advance on the greenhouse. Deputy Morris conceded:
“Q: So each time you moved physically closer to the greenhouse, and each time you increased your magnification, you were trying to shorten the distance so you could actually put yourself into that greenhouse?
A: Right.”
Only then did Deputy Morris obtain what he professed to believe was probable cause.
This situation may not be equated with installation of a pen register in offices of a telephone company to record numbers that one dials on a telephone, and to do so is to approve determined and calculated invasions of privacy.
In finding that, even if Smith habored some objective expectation that the phone numbers he dialed would remain private, his expectation was not “one that society is prepared to recognize as ‘reasonable,’ ” the Supreme Court invoked the proposition “that a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties,” and for an example pointed to its explanation in United States v. Miller, 425 U.S. 435,442-444,96 S.Ct. 1619, 1623-24, 48 L.Ed.2d 300 (1976):
“The depositor takes the risk, in revealing his affairs to another, that the information will be conveyed by that person to the Government... This Court has held repeatedly that the Fourth Amendment does not prohibit the obtaining of information revealed to a third person and conveyed by him to Government authorities, even if the information is revealed on the assumption that it will be used only for a limited purpose and the confidence placed in the third party will not be betrayed.”
The Miller rationale applied by the Supreme Court to Smith v. Maryland, supra, is inapposite to the facts in the case at bar. The majority quotes selectively only a portion of the Katz dictum that “[t]he Fourth Amendment protects people not places.” The Supreme Court added, “But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected.” Id., 389 U.S. at 351-352, 88 S.Ct. at 511. We must remember that while Katz stood in a public booth his expectation of privacy in carrying on a telephonic conversation prevailed against a “search and seizure” by electronic eavesdropping by his Government, Katz, 389 U.S. at 353, 88 S.Ct. at 512. Granted that his words were seized, still the reasonableness of his expectation of privacy flowed from “the vital role that the public telephone has come to play in private communication,” id., at 352, 88 S.Ct. at 512. The point, according to Justice Harlan, is that a public telephone booth is “a temporarily private place whose momentary occupants’ expectations of freedom from intrusions are recognized as reasonable,” id., at 361, 88 S.Ct. at 516 (Harlan, J., concurring).2
So, the question of whether a subjective expectation of privacy so clearly held by appellants is “legitimate” depends upon what society is prepared to recognize as “reasonable.” The answer to that question must depend, in turn, on what judges know as persons, for proving whatever “society is prepared to recognize” — much more that it *388is “reasonable” — is, in these times, a most difficult undertaking.
Nevertheless, considering the purpose and function of a modern greenhouse — rarely constructed of glass anymore3 — I am satisfied that society, certainly rural society, is prepared to recognize as “reasonable” a demonstratively objective expectation of privacy in the interior of such a greenhouse.
When notions of custom and civility no longer served to protect enclosed land against depredation, rural communities prevailed on the Legislature to enact penal sanctions for certain specific offensive conduct.4 The felt need for still further protection produced a criminal law against physical trespass generally, Article 1377c, P.C. 1925, as amended, and it spawned the posting of written notices forbidding non-consensual intrusion all over the countryside. Now, “fencing or other enclosures obviously designed to exclude intruders ...” gives notice that one must not enter property or a building without effective consent. Y.T.C.A. Penal Code, § 80.05.5 Thus, code of values commonly held by society with respect to privacy is reflected in the legislation its duly elected representatives have adopted.
A privacy fence around an isolated greenhouse is unreasonably redundant. The fortuitous circumstance that a set of slatlike louvers opened when the fan went on to ventilate the large Quonset style greenhouse, and remained open long enough for magnified eyes to detect what the mind hoped were marihuana plants, would not, in my view at least, cause society to withhold its recognition that the expectation of privacy exhibited by appellants was reasonable. In the country, privacy is violated by invitation only.6
However, the more use of such exotic, sophisticated devices and techniques is condoned, the more will society become conditioned to take as reasonable that which an earlier generation rejected. When the invasion approved today is extended in the next case and then the next, all reasonable expectations are doomed if the peace officer can but find the technology that enables him stealthily to intrude.
I dissent.
Before McCORMICK and W.C. DAVIS, JJ.

. All emphasis is mine unless otherwise indicated.

. On overruling Goldman v. United States, 316 U.S. 129, 62 S.Ct. 993, 86 L.Ed. 1322 (1942) (evidence obtaining by detectaphone admissible), Justice Harlan wryly noted: “Its limitation on Fourth Amendment protection is, in the present day, bad physics as well as bad law, for reasonable expectations of privacy may be defeated by electronic as well as physical invasion.” Id., at 362, 88 S.Ct. at 517.

.Traditionally a greenhouse is a building with glass components wherein plants, flowers, and sometimes vegetables are raised for purposes of sale; a conservatory, on the other hand, is a small glass structure near a private residence for raising plants and flowers for the personal pleasure of the resident. 101 C.J.S. 918, Zoning § 157; Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary. For years in this State the Commissioner of Agriculture has been charged with the responsibility of inspecting commercial greenhouses to determine whether they are infected with injurious diseases or insect pests, see former Article 119, V.A.C.S., and he still is by Y.T.C.A. Agriculture Code, § 71.044.

. See, e.g., former Article 1377b, P.C. 1925, as amended, which proscribed entering enclosed lands without consent of the owner to hunt, fish or camp.

. “ ‘Building’ means any enclosed structure intended for use or occupation ... for some purpose of trade, manufacture, ornament, or use.” V.T.C.A. Penal Code, § 30.01(2).

. Deputy Morris did not conduct surveillance from adjoining property until he had sought and obtained permission from the owner.