Court Opinion

ID: 9789638
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 01:39:28.259785+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:23.677905
License: Public Domain

YOUNG, J.,
dissenting.
The majority takes us on a journey to never-never land, where the police, without reasonable suspicion, randomly search for marijuana with a dog trained to search but are held by the majority not to have searched.
Defendant rented a storage locker and placed his padlock on it. The locker was his “effect” under Article I, section 9, of the Oregon Constitution.1 See State v. Turechek, 74 Or App 228, 702 P2d 1131 (1985). He had a constitutionally protected property interest in the locker and a constitutionally protected interest in the privacy of its contents. The Supreme Court has a simple test for a search: “A ‘search’ occurs when a person’s privacy interests are invaded.” State v. *688Owens, 302 Or 196, 206, 729 P2d 524 (1986). Although there was no physical intrusion into defendant’s property interest, the dog sniff did invade his privacy interests. It was, therefore, a “search.”
The Supreme Court has not clearly stated how to determine what privacy interests are constitutionally protected or what police actions invade those interests. That is what we must do — and what the majority fails even to attempt — in this case. The Supreme Court has never adopted the federal “reasonable expectation of privacy” test derived from Katz v. United States, 389 US 347, 88 S Ct 507, 19 L Ed 2nd 576 (1967), on which the parties, and apparently the majority, place some reliance. We have criticized and refused to adopt that test for analyzing questions under the state constitution. See State v. Dixson/Digby, 87 Or App 1, 740 P2d 1224 (1987).2
The majority treats this case as a “plain smell” variant of the “plain view” doctrine, emphasizing the lack of a physical intrusion before the officers obtained the warrant. That approach ignores the nature of privacy interests. If something that is “plain” to a dog or to a machine, but not to a human, is not private, there can be few protected privacy interests. Although a transparent container may announce its contents to a human observer so that there is no privacy interest in them, see State v. Owens, supra, 302 Or at 206, a container whose contents are unknown until some nonhuman instrument is brought to bear has announced nothing. Its contents are not in plain view, plain smell or plain feel. If the plain view/smell doctrines mean anything when applied to a closed container, it must be that a person using only unenhanced human senses must be able to discover the contents of the container without actually intruding into it.3 *689Breaker’s nose was an enhancement of normal human senses, and it invaded defendant’s protected privacy interest in the storage locker.
In dealing with protections of individual rights, we must avoid an arid literalism which ignores the constitutional purpose. “[C]ourts are apt to err by sticking too closely to the words of a law where those words import a policy that goes beyond them.” Olmstead v. United States, 277 US 438, 469, 48 S Ct 564, 72 L Ed 944 (1928) (Holmes, J., dissenting); see also 277 US at 472-74 (Brandeis, J., dissenting). Article I, section 9, is not designed simply to protect property rights; rather, it extends its protection to “houses, papers, and effects” in order to preserve privacy and individuality. The constitution creates islands of personality from which it excludes the state. See State v. Dixon/Digby, supra. In 1859, it was generally sufficient, in order to achieve that purpose, to bring under the constitutional umbrella only those prohibitions on physical intrusions into places and things which had long been part of the common law of trespass. That simple protection of privacy is no longer sufficient.
Nonintrusive methods of learning what one’s effect contains or what one does within one’s house become steadily more sophisticated. The right to exclude physical intrusions is by itself of little value for protecting privacy if nonintrusive intruders may learn all they wish to know by alternative means. Controlling the kind of investigation that the police may conduct is now as important for protecting privacy interests as is controlling the areas from which they may conduct it.4
A person may protect privacy interests by excluding others from the property and by preventing them from using their own senses to discover the contents of that property from outside the property. One who does not do so cannot demand that the police avert their eyes (or noses) from what is blatantly evident. Thus, a person who exposes himself in his living room window may not complain about the use in his *690trial for public indecency of pictures that officers took of his actions. See State v. Louis, 296 Or 57, 672 P2d 708 (1983). Neither can a person complain if officers smell mash from a distillery in his home. See State v. Duffy, 135 Or 290, 295 P 953 (1931). If police see growing marijuana through an open front door, they do not violate the constitution if they use their observations to secure a search warrant. See State v. Apodaca, 85 Or App 128, 735 P2d 1264 (1987).5 The Supreme Court has held that an officer may shine a light through a car window to illuminate the inside, State v. Riley, 240 Or 521, 402 P2d 741 (1965); but see State v. Jackson, 296 Or 430, 450, 677 P2d 21 (1984) (Lent, J., dissenting), and that observations of the contents of a transparent vial do not violate the possessor’s privacy interests. State v. Owens, supra. If Mary Ann does not pull her shades down, she cannot complain about what the neighbors see.6
The difficulty is that Mary Ann may be on the 15th floor of an apartment building when an officer uses a high-powered telescope, or she may be talking quietly to a friend on the sidewalk when the officer uses a parabolic microphone, or she may be renting a storage unit when the officer uses sensitive measuring equipment to detect and identify emanations that no human nose could smell. How can Mary Ann pull the shades down when she has no reason to believe that she needs to do so or when it may be technically impossible for her to do so effectively? Must she anticipate every technique that ingenious officers may use at the risk of losing her privacy if she does not?
In 1859, pulling down the shades kept out prying eyes; talking quietly disappointed inquisitive ears. With a few exceptions, such as telescopes or bloodhounds, a person’s observations were limited to what his or her unenhanced *691senses could detect. The physical limitations of the human senses were the essential protection of privacy interests. Those limitations were not expressly stated, because they were so obvious and today’s technology would have appeared so fanciful. Yet they underlie the constitutional provisions. Violations of the constitution were determined by trespass concepts, because a physical intrusion was the only conceivable intrusion.
The Oregon Constitution can continue to protect privacy interests only if it continues to require the physical limitations on which it is based. The Supreme Court appears to have taken that position in State v. Owens, supra. Other cases support the same conclusion. In State v. Blacker, 52 Or App 1077, 630 P2d 413 (1981), we interpreted the Fourth Amendment to prohibit the use of high-powered telescopes. In State v. Louis, supra, 296 Or at 61, the court held that the police may use cameras (including telephoto lenses) or other means of recording or measuring what they observe, so long as the effect of the devices is not to enhance the officers’ own observations.7
We should have no difficulty in placing a dog’s nose within this constitutional context. The issue is not whether the defendant had a reasonable expectation, under the privacy analysis derived from Katz v. United States, supra, that his property would not be subjected to a limited investigation by a dog. What matters is not the defendant’s expectation but the nature of the police activity. Neither is the issue the extent of the police intrusion. Focusing on the physical intrusiveness of the police activity is relevant to whether the police violated a person’s property interests, but it is analytically incompatible with recognizing one’s privacy interests. See Peebles, “The Uninvited Canine Nose and the Right to Privacy: Some Thoughts on Katz and Dogs,” 11 Ga L Rev 75, 93 (1976).8
In relying on the “plain smell” variation of “plain *692view,”9 the majority makes an entirely artifical distinction between enhanced investigations of odors surrounding the property and x-rays or other techniques which penetrate it. The distinction is similar to the discredited distinction in Olmstead v. United States, supra, concerning listening devices that did or did not physically intrude into a protected space. It is equally unpersuasive. Either method of investigation uses other than human abilities to intrude into the privacy of the contents of the property, and either method is a search:
“[A dog sniff] remains a way of detecting the contents of a private, enclosed space. With a trained dog police may obtain information about what is inside a dwelling that they could not derive from the use of their own senses. Consequently, the officers’ use of a dog is not a mere improvement of their sense of smell, as ordinary eye glasses improve vision, but is a significant enhancement accomplished by a different, and far superior, sensory instrument.” United States v. Thomas, 757 F2d 1359, 1367 (2nd Cir 1985).
See also 1 Lafave Search and Seizure § 2.2(f), 368 (2nd ed 1987).
In my view, the police may not search the contents of an effect by a dog sniff in the absence of reasonable suspicion.10 See State v. Kosta, 75 Or App 713, 708 P2d 365 (1985), rev allowed 300 Or 545 (1986). A dog’s sense of smell is greater than that of a human and is an enhancement of it. A search based on a random, even serendipitous,11 dog sniff is therefore impermissible. In such cases, the dog’s extraordinary sense of smell permits detection of something that is otherwise not discernible, just as a telescope may permit an officer to *693observe something that is not discernible to the naked eye. See State v. Blacker, supra.
Of course, if the officers had smelled the marijuana themselves, their perceptions, not Breaker’s, would have justified the warrant. However, that is not what happened. Although Deputy Kennedy did eventually smell the marijuana, Breaker directed him to it. Breaker did not simply allow Kennedy to observe better something that he had already discerned, as a flashlight or binoculars might. See State v. Berg, 60 Or App 142, 147, 652 P2d 1272 (1982); State v. Harp, 48 Or App 185, 189-90, 616 P2d 564, rev den 290 or 171 (1980). Rather, Breaker pointed him in a direction that he would not otherwise have gone. Accordingly, the information which supported the issuance of the search warrant was based on a previous search which violated defendant’s privacy rights under Article I, section 9. The taint of that previous search invalidates the later warrants.
I respectfully dissent.
Joseph, C. J., and Newman, J., join in this dissent.

 It is curious that the majority, immediately after stating that it must first consider the state constitutional issues, turns solely to cases decided by the federal courts, and by other state courts under the federal constitution, alluding to a few Oregon cases only at the very end of its opinion. It then shows what can be achieved with a creative use of Westlaw, substituting numbers of cases for analysis and forgetting that our job is not to count decisions but to weigh reasoning.

 This is not a case, like Dixson/Digby, where the issue is whether to extend constitutional protection to places or things which are not within the express constitutional language. Rather, the issue here is the extent of protection the constitution gives to an individual’s privacy interests in property which the constitution explicitly covers. It amazes me, in light of the various opinions in Dixson/Digby, that the majority can say that no Oregon appellate case has rejected the Katz analysis. 87 Or App at 614 n 3.

 A person may also be able to use the normal human sense of hearing to learn the contents of a conversation without intruding into the protected place where it occurs; that might be called plain hearing.

 For this reason, the mere fact than an odor escapes from a container does not support a “plain smell” variant of plain view, unless a human is able to smell the odor. A trained dog that sniffs the odor and reacts to it does not do so out of innate curiousity. The dog is a tool that the police use to enhance their ability to learn the contents of the container.

 We ordered suppression of the evidence in Apodaca, because the police entered to seize the plants without first getting a warrant.

 An old song describes what the singer saw through a bedr oom window:
“You were cdmbing your auburn hair;
“It was hanging upon the chair.
“If you want to keep your secrets from the neighbors,
“Pull the shades down, Mary Ann.”
Mary Ann’s privacy rights do not depend on whether she pulls the shades down. Rather, the singer saw what he saw despite her privacy and possessory rights; he was where he had a right to be and used only his unaided senses in looking.

 The legislature has specifically regulated the interception of electronic communications to achieve a similar result. ORS 133.721 to ORS 133.739; see State v. Pottle, 296 Or 274, 677 P2d 1 (1984).

 Although the article uses the Katz “reasonable expectation of privacy” analysis, its comments are still relevant to privacy interests under the Oregon Constitution.

 There are two “plain view” rules. The first, which is a true exception to the warrant requirement, is that evidence may be seized from a constitutionally protected place without a warrant if (1) there is no illegal intrusion, (2) the evidence is discovered inadvertently and (3) it is immediately apparent to the police that they have evidence before them. See State v. Walle, 52 Or App 963, 967, 630 P2d 377 (1981). The second involves a situation in which there is no search, because the officer did not intrude into a constitutionally protected area. See State v. Roles, 75 Or App 63, 705 P2d 227 (1985). “Plain smell” is a variation of the second type.

 There is no present need to consider the proper use of other enhancements of human senses. Some may be improper in all circumstances, some may require reasonable suspicion and some may require probable cause and a warrant.

 One may question how serendipitous this discovery was. The record shows that the officers were getting permission to “train” Breaker in every storage facility in the county.