| California v. Greenwood | ||||||
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 Supreme Court of the United States |
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| Argued January 11, 1988 Decided May 16, 1988 |
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| Full case name | California v. Billy Greenwood And Dyanne Van Houten | |||||
| Citations | 486 U.S. 35 (more) 108 S.Ct. 1625, 56 USLW 4409, 100 L.Ed.2d 30 |
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| Prior history | Drug charges against defendants dismissed by California Superior Court (unpublished). Affirmed, California Court of Appeal, 182 Cal.App.3d 729 (1986). Certiorari granted, 483 U.S. 1019 (1987). | |||||
| Subsequent history | None | |||||
| Holding | ||||||
| The Fourth Amendment does not prohibit the warrantless search and seizure of waste left for collection outside the curtilage of a home. California Court of Appeal reversed. | ||||||
| Court membership | ||||||
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| Case opinions | ||||||
| Majority | White, joined by Blackmun, Stevens, O’Connor, Scalia, Rehnquist | |||||
| Dissent | Brennan, joined by Marshall | |||||
| Laws applied | ||||||
| U.S. Const. Amend. IV; Cal. Const., Art. I, § 28(d) | ||||||
California v. Greenwood, 486 U.S. 35 (1988)[1], was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Fourth Amendment does not prohibit the warrantless search and seizure of garbage left for collection outside the curtilage of a home.
Contents |
In early 1984, Investigator Jenny Stracner of the Laguna Beach Police Department learned from various sources that Billy Greenwood might be selling illegal drugs out of his single-family home. In April, Stracner asked the neighborhood's regular trash collector to pick up the plastic garbage bags that Greenwood left on the curb in front of his house. In the garbage, she found evidence of drug use. She used that information to obtain a warrant to search Greenwood's home. When officers searched the house, they found cocaine and marijuana. Greenwood and Dyanne Van Houten were arrested and released on bail.
In May, another investigator again had the garbage collectors pick up the garbage bags left on the curb. The garbage again contained evidence of drugs, the police obtained another search warrant, and they found more drugs and evidence of drug trafficking in the house.
The California Superior Court dismissed the charges against Greenwood and Van Houten on the ground that unwarranted trash searches violated the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment, as well as the California Constitution. The Court of Appeal affirmed. The Supreme Court of California refused to hear the appeal. The U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari and reversed the judgment of the California Court of Appeal.
By a 6-2 vote (Justice Kennedy took no part in the case), the Court held that under the Fourth Amendment, no warrant was necessary to search the trash because Greenwood had no reasonable expectation of privacy in it. Although Greenwood had hidden the trash from view by putting in opaque plastic bags and expected it to be on the street only a short time before it would be taken to the dump, the Court believed it to be “common knowledge” that garbage at the side of the street is “readily accessible to animals, children, scavengers, snoops, and other members of the public.” Moreover, Greenwood had left the trash there expressly so that the trash collector, a stranger, could take it. Quoting Katz v. United States, the court concluded that "[w]hat a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection."
Greenwood argued that the evidence should be excluded under the California Constitution, which the California Supreme Court had interpreted to prohibit warrantless searches of garbage left at the curb. An amendment to the California Constitution, however, had eliminated the exclusionary rule for unconstitutionally obtained evidence. The Court rejected Greenwood’s claim that the amendment violated the Due Process Clause. It held that so long as the police conduct did not violate federal law, “California could permissibly conclude that the benefits of excluding relevant evidence of criminal activity do not outweigh the costs.”
Justice Brennan reasoned that the possibility the police or other “unwelcome meddlers” might rummage through the trash bags “does not negate the expectation of privacy in their contents any more than the possibility of a burglary negates an expectation of privacy in the home.” Under United States v. Chadwick, the bags could not have been searched without a warrant had Greenwood been carrying them in public. Merely leaving them on the curb for the garbage man to collect, Brennan argued, should not be found to remove that expectation of privacy, for “scrutiny of another's trash is contrary to commonly accepted notions of civilized behavior.”
Works related to California v. Greenwood at Wikisource| ←United States Supreme Court | California v.
Greenwood Syllabus |
| California v. Greenwood, 486 U.S. 35 (1988), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Fourth Amendment does not prohibit the warrantless search and seizure of garbage left for collection outside the curtilage of a home. — Excerpted from California v. Greenwood on Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. |
| Court Documents |
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| Opinion of the
Court |
| Dissenting Opinion Brennan |
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Acting on information indicating that respondent Greenwood might be
engaged in narcotics trafficking, police twice obtained from his
regular trash collector garbage bags left on the curb in front of
his house. On the basis of items in the bags which were indicative
of narcotics use, the police obtained warrants to search the house,
discovered controlled substances during the searches, and arrested
respondents on felony narcotics charges. Finding that probable
cause to search the house would not have existed without the
evidence obtained from the trash searches, the State Superior Court
dismissed the charges under People v. Krivda, 5 Cal.3d
357, 486 P.2d 1262, which held that warrantless trash searches
violate the Fourth Amendment and the California Constitution.
Although noting a post-Krivda state constitutional
amendment eliminating the exclusionary rule for evidence seized in
violation of state, but not federal, law, the State Court of Appeal
affirmed on the ground that Krivda was based on federal,
as well as state, law.
Held:
1. The Fourth Amendment does not prohibit the warrantless search and seizure of garbage left for collection outside the curtilage of a home. Pp. 39-44.
(a) Since respondents voluntarily left their trash for collection in an area particularly suited for public inspection, their claimed expectation of privacy in the inculpatory items they discarded was not objectively reasonable. It is common knowledge that plastic garbage bags left along a public street are readily accessible to animals, children, scavengers, snoops, and other members of the public. Moreover, respondents placed their refuse at the curb for the express purpose of conveying it to a third party, the trash collector, who might himself have sorted through it or permitted others, such as the police, to do so. The police cannot reasonably be expected to avert their eyes from evidence of criminal activity that could have been observed by any member of the public. Pp. 43-44.
(b) Greenwood's alternative argument that his expectation of privacy in his garbage should be deemed reasonable as a matter of federal constitutional law because the warrantless search and seizure of his garbage was impermissible as a matter of California law under Krivda, [p36] which he contends survived the state constitutional amendment, is without merit. The reasonableness of a search for Fourth Amendment purposes does not depend upon privacy concepts embodied in the law of the particular State in which the search occurred; rather, it turns upon the understanding of society as a whole that certain areas deserve the most scrupulous protection from government invasion. There is no such understanding with respect to garbage left for collection at the side of a public street. Pp. 43-44.
2. Also without merit is Greenwood's contention that the California constitutional amendment violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Just as this Court's Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule decisions have not required suppression where the benefits of deterring minor police misconduct were overbalanced by the societal costs of exclusion, California was not foreclosed by the Due Process Clause from concluding that the benefits of excluding relevant evidence of criminal activity do not outweigh the costs when the police conduct at issue does not violate federal law. Pp. 44-45.
182 Cal.App.3d 729, 227 Cal.Rptr. 539, reversed and remanded.
WHITE, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which REHNQUIST, C.J., and BLACKMUN, STEVENS, O'CONNOR, and SCALIA, JJ., joined. BRENNAN, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which MARSHALL, J., joined, post, p. 45. KENNEDY, J., took no part in the consideration or decision of the case. [p37]
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