Court: Garbage is private in meth case

[rainbow4321]

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/213348_garbage24.html


SPOKANE -- City police violated a man's privacy rights by combing through his trash for evidence of methamphetamine production without a warrant, the state Court of Appeals has ruled.

The case arose in 2003 when sheriff's detectives said they found a meth lab in Sweeney's closet after obtaining a search warrant based on a surreptitious examination of his garbage.

At the request of sheriff's Detective David Knechtel, a city garbage collector took Sweeney's can from the curb as usual but dumped it into an empty hopper so Knechtel could go through it a few blocks away. Knechtel found chemicals and other material used in meth making and cited his findings to obtain a warrant to search Sweeney's house.

Under the state constitution, "Mr. Sweeney had a reasonable expectation that his garbage would be collected from his curb, mixed with other garbage, and taken to a refuse facility," Judge Frank Kurtz wrote for the appeals panel. Kurtz concluded the detective's methods constituted "an unreasonable intrusion by the government into Mr. Sweeney's private affairs."

[displacedtexan]

1. Why can't the police take proper precautions?

If you had a hunch that some meth maker was tossing evidence in the garbage, wouldn't you just follow the garbage to the dump and avoid a court fight?

Yes, it's messy; but democracy wasn't designed to be neat & clean.

[ashmanonar]

2. the whole thing is bullshit.

i don't remember the court decision, but i'm pretty sure garbage is fair game. police can't get in trouble for searching someone's garbage.

unless that's changed recently, or these judges want it to change.

[no_hypocrisy]

3. Bogus decision, likely to be reversed. Taking garbage out to the public

street/sidewalk makes it fair game for anyone: your neighbor, your enemy, the police. On the other hand, police, etc. can't go ONTO YOUR PROPERTY (dumpster is next to your home, etc.) to remove or go through the garbage.

[ashmanonar]

5. well, in the day and age of new american fascism...

i'm not so sure it'll be overturned.

but i guess you're right, they can't go up to the house to do it.

[LeighAnn]

14. Remember Portland Oregon?

I remember a couple of years ago this came up in Portland, and a low-level judge ruled it to be fair game, and then the local weekly newspaper sent its journalists out to dig through the garbage of the sheriff, prosecutor, and judge and published the "findings". It was pretty funny.

I'm pretty sure this hasn't made it to the Supreme Court yet.

[SouthernDem2004]

18. California v. Greenwood, 486 U.S. 35 (1988)

[Kelvin Mace]

23. I posted the story below

The judge actually overturned it.

[no_hypocrisy]

4. dupe

[Ian David]

8. Last I heard, garbage was considered "abandoned property"

The exception was "separated recyclables," because:

1) The recyclables are goods with monetary value.

2) There was a contract between you and the recycling company to receive the goods.

[Kelvin Mace]

9. If you suspect a crime

why don't you get a warrant?

Any time you allow the police to go on fishing expeditions, you are asking for trouble.

David Allen
www.thoughtcrimes.org

[SouthernDem2004]

19. Why? Because:

1) You do not need a warrant according to the U.S. Supreme court.
2) If I walk into a Judges office and ask for a warrant to search garbage he is going to look at me like I am retarded and order me out of his office.

[Kelvin Mace]

24. The Supreme Court was wrong

The point I am making is that the you SHOULD be required to get a warrant to go through people's garbage.

David Allen
www.blackboxvoting.com
www.thoughtcrimes.org

[snippy]

10. I think the case you are referring to was decidied under

the US Constitution. The case in this article was decided under the state constitution. Of course, the state Supreme Court still may reverse it.

[ashmanonar]

21. ahh.

ok. i wasn't sure.

[LiberallyInclined]

16. once the garbage has been mixed with other garbage-

like in the back of a garbage truck, there's no way to determine what garbage is whose.

[Kelvin Mace]

6. Messing with people's garbage can get rather creepy

From the Willamette Week:

Hoesly, a 13-year police officer who occasionally was an undercover decoy in police prostitution stings, became the subject of an investigation early this year, when she told police she'd been assaulted by her ex-boyfriend, Joshua David Rodriguez. Rodriguez has a history of drug arrests and convictions, and when officers booked him on assault charges, they found meth in his pocket.

Subsequently police began investigating Hoesly, hearing rumors from police informants that she had used drugs. On March 13 at 2:07 am, narcotics officers Jay Bates and Michael Krantz took her garbage. The order to do so came from Assistant Chief Andrew Kirkland, who dated Hoesly in the early '90s.

Searching through her trash back at Central Precinct, they found traces of cocaine and methamphetamine, as well as drug paraphernalia. They also found a bloody tampon. They sent a piece of the tampon to the state crime lab, where forensics experts tested it for drugs, DNA and, for reasons that remain unclear, semen. The results of those tests have not been released.

The police didn't seek a search warrant to take Hoesly's trash because, as the Multnomah County District Attorney's office conceded, officers didn't at the time have sufficient evidence to convince a judge to issue a warrant. But once they had drug residue from Hoesly's trash, officers were able to persuade Judge Dorothy Baker to issue a search warrant for Hoesly's house. Inside, they found more paraphernalia and a diary that described apparent drug use. An indictment was issued in June.

Still think garbage is fair game?

A few week after this story broke, reporters from the Willamette Week did the same thing with the DA's and the police chief's garbage, discussing what they gleened about their personal life from their garbage.

Predictably, the officials were outraged at the "invasion" of their privacy.

David Allen
www.thoughtcrimes.org

[Kelvin Mace]

7. Here's the Willamette Week story

http://www.wweek.com/story.php?story=3485&page=1

Each, in his or her own way, has endorsed the notion that you abandon your privacy when you set your trash out on the curb. So we figured they wouldn't mind too much if we took a peek at theirs.

Boy, were we wrong.

Perched in his office on the 15th floor of the Justice Center, Chief Kroeker seemed perfectly comfortable with the idea of trash as public property.

"Things inside your house are to be guarded," he told WW. "Those that are in the trash are open for trash men and pickers and--and police. And so it's not a matter of privacy anymore."

Then we spread some highlights from our haul on the table in front of him.

"This is very cheap," he blurted out, frowning as we pointed out a receipt with his credit-card number, a summary of his wife's investments, an email prepping the mayor about his job application to be police chief of Los Angeles, a well-chewed cigar stub, and a handwritten note scribbled in pencil on a napkin, so personal it made us cringe. We also drew his attention to a newsletter from the conservative political advocacy group Focus on the Family, addressed to "Mr. & Mrs. Mark Kroeker."

"Are you a member of Focus on the Family?" we asked.

"No," the chief replied.

"Is your wife?"

"You know," he said, with a Clint Eastwood gaze, "it's none of your business."

As we explained our thinking, the chief, who is usually polite to a fault, cut us off in midsentence. "OK," he said, suddenly standing up, "we're done."

[slaveplanet]

11. Unfortunately this ruling will soon be mute

The advent of nanotech readers already going into garbage trucks, will allow them to know your refuse. They won't even need to get their hands dirty. They'll also use the technology for the consumption tax , when it's not in snoop mode.

[SouthernDem2004]

12. US Supreme Court case: California v. Greenwood, 486 U.S. 35 (1988)

States the garbage can be searched. This judge made a very bad ruling. He has allowed his personal opinion to come into play instead of the actual law. He will be overturned.

[Kelvin Mace]

15. I have NO problem

with garbage being searched WITH a warrant. If you have probable cause, you get a warrant. If you don't, you don't.

Warrantless searches of garbage is a BAD idea.

David Allen
www.blackboxvoting.com
www.thoughtcrimes.org

[SouthernDem2004]

17. Once you throw something away it is no longer your property. So a warrant

is not needed.

[Kelvin Mace]

25. Your garbage contains

much about your private life. As we saw in the story I posted here, if the police can start fishing out tampons and testing them for drugs, the next step is to start targeting "enemies" of the state for such "investigation".

Also, it is a HELL of a lot easier to plant evidence in your garbage than in your house.

David Allen
www.blackboxvoting.com
www.thoughtcrimes.org

[shanti]

13. this happened

with a marijuana case here in northern cali. the sheriffs went thru dude's trash and found stems, etc. this evidence was presented to court.

[Richard Steele]

20. They should be argueing to exclude this for a different reason.

The cop did not search the garbage on-site; he asked a garbageman to move it a few blocks to another dumpster.

That garbageman is NOT a law-enforcement official; and doing favors for cops is NOT part of his job.
His introduction into the 'chain of evidence' might be sufficient to taint said evidence in the eyes of a court.

Just my $.02

[SouthernDem2004]

22. The courts view it just the opposite...

By having the garbage brought straight to them instead of being bumped in with the other trash they can show that the evidence was not mixed with other trash or tainted.