california v. greenwood
Year: 1988
Result: 6:2, favor California
Related Constitutional issue/amendment: 4th amendment (unreasonable search and seizure)
Civil Rights or Civil Liberties: Liberties
Significance/Precedent: Searches and seizures are not unreasonable or unconstitutional if their location is considered a public place, like the curbside on a street. States may restrict police conduct and activity in their own constitutions and include more specific constraints on the abilities of policemen to search through property.
Quote from majority opinion: "Here, we conclude that respondents exposed their garbage to the public sufficiently to defeat their claim to Fourth Amendment protection. It is common knowledge that plastic garbage bags left on or at the side of 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 respondents' trash or permitted others, such ast the police, to do so. Accordingly, having 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."
6-word summary: 4th amendment excludes public curbside trash
Result: 6:2, favor California
Related Constitutional issue/amendment: 4th amendment (unreasonable search and seizure)
Civil Rights or Civil Liberties: Liberties
Significance/Precedent: Searches and seizures are not unreasonable or unconstitutional if their location is considered a public place, like the curbside on a street. States may restrict police conduct and activity in their own constitutions and include more specific constraints on the abilities of policemen to search through property.
Quote from majority opinion: "Here, we conclude that respondents exposed their garbage to the public sufficiently to defeat their claim to Fourth Amendment protection. It is common knowledge that plastic garbage bags left on or at the side of 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 respondents' trash or permitted others, such ast the police, to do so. Accordingly, having 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."
6-word summary: 4th amendment excludes public curbside trash