Court Opinion

ID: 9481162
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:10:23.002912+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:48:08.453977
License: Public Domain

CUDAHY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
The contents of our garbage cans may be unvalued trash, but it is nonetheless our *401unvalued trash. Hedrick had a reasonable expectation of privacy in his garbage and the clandestine searches involved here violated his rights. In fact, the detectives’ stealth in conducting these searches is one indicator of their impropriety. Trash at curbside would not have required the officers to proceed in secret, sneaking up under cover of a hedge to snatch the garbage. If the garbage was, as the majority asserts, “readily accessible” to the public, at 400, I do not understand why — in Army jargon — a “tactical” approach to it by the police was required. Apparently, this garbage was readily accessible only to searchers equipped with binoculars and x-ray vision.
Nor is Hedrick’s voluntary relinquishment of his garbage of consequence. As Justice Brennan observed in dissent in Greenwood:
More importantly, even the voluntary relinquishment of possession or control over an effect does not necessarily amount to a relinquishment of a privacy expectation in it. Were it otherwise, a letter or package would lose all Fourth Amendment protection when placed in a mailbox or other depository with the “express purpose” of entrusting it to the postal officer or a private carrier; those bailees are just as likely as trash collectors (and certainly have greater incentive) to “sor[t] through” the personal effects entrusted to them, “or permi[t] others, such as police to do so.”
California v. Greenwood, 486 U.S. 35, 55, 108 S.Ct. 1625, 1637, 100 L.Ed.2d 30 (1988) (Brennan, J., dissenting) (quoting majority opinion). The trash collector’s scheduled collections of the searched material does not therefore render the privacy expectation unreasonable.
I.
To me, prior holdings do not control this situation. The fact that the trash was clearly within Hedrick’s property, not on the edge, distinguishes the case from Greenwood, where the trash was left at curbside, and from United States v. Kramer, 711 F.2d 789 (7th Cir.1989), where the trash was also at the curb but inside a knee-high fence. In these cases the place where the garbage was located, and not its status as “lowly” garbage, seemed to lessen the expectation of privacy. See Greenwood, 486 U.S. at 40, 108 S.Ct. at 1628 (trash was “at the curb for the express purpose of conveying it to a third party” (emphasis added)). The trash’s location permitted public inspection. “[Hjaving deposited their garbage ‘in an area particularly suited for public inspection and, in a manner of speaking, public consumption, for the express purpose of having strangers take it,’ respondents could have had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the inculpatory items that they discarded.” Id. at 40-41, 108 S.Ct. at 1628-29 (emphasis added; citing United States v. Reicherter, 647 F.2d 397, 399 (3d Cir.1981)). In short, I do not agree that Greenwood or Kramer controls the situation where the trash is well within one’s property. Here, the trash may even have been closer to the garage than the street, Tr. at 145 (testimony of Detective Nearing), and the zone of privacy surrounding the house included the trash. And in neither Greenwood nor Kramer was a surreptitious approach by searchers to the garbage required.
This case is difficult to distinguish from one in which garbage is immediately adjacent to the house. See United States v. Certain Real Property Located at 987 Fisher Road, 719 F.Supp. 1396 (E.D.Mich.1989); People v. Edwards, 71 Cal.2d 1096, 458 P.2d 713, 80 Cal.Rptr. 633 (1969). To me, there is no principled basis separating Hedrick’s case from one in which garbage is kept on the back porch, although there is a distinction between garbage placed at curbside — discussed in Greenwood and Kramer — and garbage kept well within the outer edges of the defendant’s property. While additional factors may lessen the expectation of privacy for objects as close to the house as Hedrick’s garbage, they are certainly not apparent here.
In sum, the rationale that explains the absence of an expectation of privacy at the curbside is not that the garbage is soon to be picked up but simply that it is near the road. Proximity to the street, combined *402with the release of garbage into the public domain, are both essential to finding unreasonable an expectation of privacy. Either factor alone is not enough, implying that Hedrick’s expectation is not unreasonable merely because it was his unvalued refuse that was seized.
II.
Each of the majority’s contentions fails to provide an adequate basis for the war-rantless search. First, the majority argues that the “common practice of scavengers, snoops and other members of the public in sorting through garbage” makes the expectation of privacy unreasonable. The same, it appears, could be said of garbage propped against the back wall of a house (or contained in a living-room waste basket), which a snoop may feel justified in examining. Garbage left at the curb may indeed be susceptible to inspection by scavengers, snoops and other members of the public, but this susceptibility does not in itself define the extent of a reasonable expectation of privacy.
Further, even if we accept this standard, Hedrick’s garbage apparently was not susceptible to easy inspection by scavengers, snoops and other members of the public. As we have noted, the police officers seizing the evidence had to proceed, like soldiers advancing under fire, behind cover of hedge to secure the evidence; presumably, they feared that their being sighted by Hedrick would alert him to their search. In short, the “scavengers, snoops and other members of the public” rationale fails because its net casts too broadly in some cases and not. broadly enough in others. Some snoops may wander into another’s garage, clearly within the range of a reasonable expectation of privacy, while the curbside garbage of a country homeowner — distant from urban interlopers like snoops and scavengers — -does not for this reason enjoy heightened protection.
Finally, the cases relied on by the majority refer to incomparable types of property and are inapposite. Thus, I am not persuaded by United States v. Dunkel, 900 F.2d 105 (7th Cir.1990), which the majority uses for the proposition that property inside the curtilage (there, a dumpster on a business premises) may not be within the zone where privacy can reasonably be expected. In Dunkel, the dumpster sat off a parking lot and was some 55 feet from the building. 900 F.2d at 106. Hedrick’s driveway was not a parking lot; his residence, not a business; and his garbage, not so clearly exposed to the public.
The majority likewise misplaces its reliance on the “view” rationale of California v. Ciraolo, 476 U.S. 207, 106 S.Ct. 1809, 90 L.Ed.2d 210 (1986). Ciraolo relies explicitly on the availability of the defendant’s premises for inspection by anyone flying overhead — no zone of privacy protects the homeowner from overhead “view.” This, it seems to me, is clearly distinguishable from Hedrick’s situation. Hedrick’s garbage was a substantial distance from the curb. It was in opaque, covered containers. It was near the house and garage and it created enough anxiety in the detective that she had to proceed by hiding behind the bushes. In short, the only way that it was “exposed” to the public was that it took the lowly form of garbage awaiting collection, a rationale eschewed by the Court in Greenwood.
III.
Hedrick’s garbage cans were well within the private portion of his property, and the garbage was not exposed to public view. The curtilage of Hedrick’s house included the garbage, and the material was not, like an open back yard from the air, subject to ready public inspection. Requiring police to secure a warrant before seizing such evidence is a minimal burden that protects a homeowner’s valued zone of privacy.
I respectfully dissent.