Telltale Trash

Interpreting the Fourth Amendment is a task to turn judges into metaphysicians. How, for example, does the guarantee against "unreasonable searches and seizures" apply to a citizen's garbage?

In Highgrove, Calif., last winter, a neighbor tipped the police that Mr. and Mrs. Robert Edwards had on their back porch a suspicious package containing "a dark green vegetable substance that appeared similar to alfalfa but did not smell like alfalfa." Without a search warrant, the police rummaged in the Edwardses' backyard trash cans and found a few pinches of pot. They forced their way into the house, arrested the couple and proceeded to search the premises until, they claimed later, they found caches of marijuana and LSD. After the defendants were each sentenced to between one and ten years, they were released on bail pending appeal.

Key Standard. By a unanimous vote, the California Supreme Court has just reversed the convictions. The judges ruled that the Fourth Amendment protects a man's trash can as well as his home because the can is "an adjunct of the domestic economy." Equally important, the judges pointed out that the Fourth Amendment has been interpreted as protecting "people, not places." The key standard is a citizen's "reasonable expectation of privacy." As long as he has reason to assume that he is in a private place, the police normally cannot invade his privacy and seize evidence without a search warrant.

As the court saw it, the Edwardses obviously assumed that their trash cans were private. Said the court: "We can readily ascribe many reasons why residents would not want their castaway clothing, letters, medicine bottles and other telltale refuse and trash to be examined by neighbors or others."

If the Edwardses are retried, suggested the court, the state must show that the evidence seized in the search of their house was not the "fruit" of the unlawful search of their trash. To use this evidence, the state will have to prove that the police would have been interested in the couple's activities even without the telltale trash, and also had other probable cause to arrest them. In addition, the Edwardses could benefit if a U.S. Supreme Court decision of last June (Chimel v. California) is ever made retroactive. In Chimel, the court restricted policemen making arrests to searches of the suspect's person or the "area under his immediate control."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.