California v. Greenwood
· Case: California v. Greenwood
· Year: 1988
· Result: 6-2, favor California
· Related constitutional issue/amendment:Amendment 4: warrant for search
· Civil rights or Civil liberties: Civil Liberties
· Significance/precedent: The Court held that garbage placed at the curbside is unprotected by the Fourth Amendment. There is no privacy for trash on public streets that is visible to everyone in the public. Now, police investigators can search a person's trash without a warrant ONLY if the trash is left on the curbside.
· Quote from majority opinion: “An expectation of privacy does not give rise to Fourth Amendment protection, however, unless society is prepared to accept that expectation as objectively reasonable. 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 as the police, to do so. What a person knowingly exposed to the public, even in his own him or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection. We have already concluded that society as a whole possesses no such understandings with regard to garbage left for collection at the side of a public street. Respondents argument is no less than a suggestion that concepts of privacy under
the laws of each State are to determine the reach of the Fourth Amendment. We do not accept this submission”.
· Illustration/image: See Below
· 6-word summary: Drug Dealer trash, Warrantless search legal
· Year: 1988
· Result: 6-2, favor California
· Related constitutional issue/amendment:Amendment 4: warrant for search
· Civil rights or Civil liberties: Civil Liberties
· Significance/precedent: The Court held that garbage placed at the curbside is unprotected by the Fourth Amendment. There is no privacy for trash on public streets that is visible to everyone in the public. Now, police investigators can search a person's trash without a warrant ONLY if the trash is left on the curbside.
· Quote from majority opinion: “An expectation of privacy does not give rise to Fourth Amendment protection, however, unless society is prepared to accept that expectation as objectively reasonable. 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 as the police, to do so. What a person knowingly exposed to the public, even in his own him or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection. We have already concluded that society as a whole possesses no such understandings with regard to garbage left for collection at the side of a public street. Respondents argument is no less than a suggestion that concepts of privacy under
the laws of each State are to determine the reach of the Fourth Amendment. We do not accept this submission”.
· Illustration/image: See Below
· 6-word summary: Drug Dealer trash, Warrantless search legal