California v. Greenwood

We'll hear argument next to number 86 684 California versus Billy Greenwood and Diane Van Houten Hey everyone, this is Leon from prologue projects on this week's episode of five to four Peter Riannan and Michael are talking about California v. Greenwood a case from 1988, but the fourth amendment and trash What was the last thing you threw away? Maybe it was just an innocent receipt or maybe it was something more personal like an empty medication bottle or a bank statement In the case of Billy Greenwood his trash contained evidence of illegal drug use This came to the attention of police who for weeks coordinated with Greenwood's local garbage men to have his trash separated and held for them to inspect They did this without a warrant but used the evidence They found from his garbage to later secure a warrant to search his house where they eventually found illegal substances and arrested Greenwood Unfalial any charges Greenwood sued arguing at the search of his garbage violated his fourth amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures In a 6-2 decision the court held at curbside garbage is not protected by the fourth amendment This is five to four a podcast about how much the Supreme Court sucks Welcome to five to four where we dissect and analyze the Supreme Court cases that have debased our civil rights like Hosting a UFC fight at the White House is debasing our nation. I'm Peter. I'm here with Michael. Hey everybody and reanna Hi everybody, you know what it's kind of like, okay. Do you believe me now? I've been saying like this is America, you know Yes, reveals what America's true nature really is and here you go. I don't want to hear a single Democrat I don't want to hear a single little Righteous annoying little lip online be like, oh how America has fallen our image blah blah blah. No, this is the most genuine Expression of the American id exactly. Yeah, they're doing the way in at the Lincoln Memorial, baby And that is what we think about our fucking Conquest of over the south this is one of like the unequivocally funny things that have happened because first of all, there's no real material downside We were just talking about this before the show like the aesthetics are starting to match the American soul, you know I mean, yeah, no more of like the high-minded. Oh, we're trying to evoke ancient Greece with our with our architecture Right, none of that shit. No, let's get Chris Angel floating above the Washington Monument Yeah, let's get let's put fucking Michael Phelps in the reflecting pool. All right, duck dynasty guys need to be there Need to have a prominent role. Hmm. Absolutely What other bits can we think? Vince McMahon. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah Joe Rogan's gonna be there. I'm sure he's got a bit You can't do the fights without Joe Rogan. Now. What are they going to do with the MLK Memorial? It's Right over there That's right over there balls in your court Donald then the Washington Memorial, you know, like America's penis so phallic There's something I'm sure. Yeah Yep, World War two memorial sucks too much to have anything to do anything fun with All right, let's move on today's case California v. Greenwood case from 1988 about the Fourth Amendment specifically about police going through your trash In this case, yep, some cops suspected a man named Billy Greenwood of dealing drugs But they didn't have enough evidence for a warrant so in order to gather evidence they went through his trash They found evidence of drugs in the trash and they used that evidence to obtain and execute a warrant Which revealed drugs and ultimately led to Billy's conviction Billy appealed saying hey Fourth Amendment, right? I have an expectation of privacy and the cops violated that by going through my trash without cause But the Supreme Court in a six to two decision said that that was fine. Yeah, they sure did Fourth Amendment does not apply to trash. They're saying here. So let's situate ourselves. What happened in the case This is early 1984 a totally different person who was suspected of totally different crimes Unnamed person kind of gets the ball rolling here. Unfortunately for Billy Greenwood This is a criminal suspect who was being investigated by the DEA and he told a federal agent that he knew about this big truck Full of narcotics that was going to be delivered to a certain address The federal agent runs the address and it comes back as the house of Billy Greenwood so the feds let local police in Laguna Beach, California know and The Laguna Beach Police Department start to investigate Billy Greenwood's house start to set up some surveillance There had additionally been like a past report by a neighbor of Billy Greenwood That his house often had late-night visitors people who just stay for a few minutes and then leave You know the investigator from the Laguna Beach Police Department at one point Followed a car that had stopped at Billy Greenwood's house and that car Went to yet another house that had previously been investigated for drug trafficking yada yada yada Who fucking cares get a job? pigs get a real fucking job do something that matters All right, so here at this point the investigator decides to violate the Constitution. Let's just fast forward Billy Greenwood's constitutional rights in the trash as well as unfortunately evidence of crime in the trash This investigator she asks the trash collector in the neighborhood to collect Greenwood's trash And instead of putting it with the rest of the neighborhood trash like all in the same trash truck Investigator says hey keep it separate and let me look through it. So the trash collector grabs the bags of Billy Greenwood's trash that are out on the curb out on the street and He keeps it separate hands it over to this investigator and she looks through it She finds evidence of drugs which she then uses to get a warrant to search Billy Greenwood's house So police search the house they execute that warrant. There's drug stuff in the house Greenwood gets arrested And he post bond so he's released on bail and while he's out on bail the police do the same thing again They search the trash they get a warrant to search his house And then they arrest him again on the basis of drug evidence found in the house when they executed the second warrant Okay, just pausing right here. This is telling in terms of the order of operations here the amount of evidence that they had before Searching the trash Before violating Billy Greenwood's constitutional rights, right? They had you know, this sort of like tip that this other guy told the feds that Billy Greenwood's address might be a destination address for drugs They see cars pulling up to Greenwood's address and then leaving after just a few minutes But police don't ask for a warrant at that point with that evidence They only asked for a warrant to search the house after they have looked through the trash and found that evidence of drugs because dear reader dear listener the evidence that they had before violating Billy Greenwood's constitutional rights is not enough to get a warrant, right? The state court of appeals in fact in California holds that to be true They say you wouldn't have gotten a warrant but for the trash search You didn't have probable cause to justify a warrant before you looked through the trash so as Peter already said, you know Billy Greenwood charged now with multiple drug offenses Goes to trial gets convicted but appeals because he says wait a second this search It happened in violation of my constitutional rights the Fourth Amendment protects me from unreasonable searches and This search is unreasonable because I have an expectation of privacy about what goes into my trash This gets appealed actually state courts in California agree with him But once we get over into federal court goes all the way up to the Supreme Court and Supreme Court says Trash no no rights Yeah so Talk about the law a bit the Fourth Amendment says you cannot be subjected to unreasonable searches and seizures so obviously the question Before the court in these cases is always sort of well, what's reasonable and courts have established a rule where the determination for what's reasonable revolves around whether or not you had a reasonable expectation of privacy if there's no expectation of privacy the cops can search without a warrant So the fundamental question here is do people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the contents of their trash Just as white writes for the majority He says Greenwood did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the in his trash because he had it sufficiently exposed it to the public and I'm gonna read a lot of quotes from his opinion He says 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 This is goofy dude. What is this analysis? Raccoons go through your trash so the cops can't hold on before we get to the raccoons First of all, I he's just doing this analysis wrong. The question isn't how accessible your trash is It's whether it's reasonable to expect it to remain private, right? So, yes, someone could in theory scavenge through your trash, but would you expect that to happen? Right. Yes, how often do these things happen to most people? We were talking about this like in my entire life. I'm 40 once in my life Someone like went through my trash and was like teenagers like dumped our trash on the road, right? Like just to be annoying. They didn't they didn't go through it really as far as I know And you guys said it has never happened to you So our producer also has never had this happen. So a combined like 150 years of living and it's happened once And a justice of the Supreme Court is being like, well, yeah, of course, of course, of course Everyone's going through your trash all the time. Yeah, how often is this is a child sifting through your trash? She's like of everyone knows snoops children and scavengers. Yes snoops and snoops Are looking through their trash. Mm-hmm scavengers and snoops two different categories, right? Like he's just adding to the list like what other word could I use? What other word could I use for someone who might be going through the trash? What about a different species and but in general he's just sort of he's Conflating these things and doing this analysis wrong. He's saying well It's accessible to all of these different people and it's like, okay Yes, but that is not what the Fourth Amendment protects against and that's not how the test works, right? You know example we were talking about is like what if your garage is open or even your front door is unlocked Yeah, your garage or even your home becomes accessible to the public But that doesn't mean it's not protected by the Fourth Amendment. Yeah insane an insane inclusion and also why are you including animals? What if a raccoon goes through your trash the raccoons not like oh violating oh he's shopping here like wow reading your receipts and being like Not reading your receipts, bro Your constitutional rights have not been violated Like remember when my first moved out to the verbs and raccoons were going through my trash And I was like fuck and I was but at no point was I like yeah Should they're really they're looking at my bills like I'm gonna They're eating your rotting leftovers like nothing. What does this have to do with privacy? right Also like mice can get into your house, right? So the Fourth Amendment doesn't apply. It's like we all know mice can get into the home and if If mice can get there cops can go there too. Those those are the rules Yeah, god, it's just so weird not only does it get the test wrong, but it just Fundamentally misunderstands the average person's expectations about what would happen with their trash Yeah, does anyone actually expect that people are going through their trash. Are you telling me that if you looked outside? And you just saw a Local a local snoop going through your trash that you're just like oh Another day in the neighborhood. Oh that that snoop so annoying always looking through my trash This is of course what we all know happens when you put your trash out And I think what we're getting at is like everybody does actually have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their trash and These examples are like either so few and far between in their incidents in real life or literally not Relevant do not pose a problem because he's talking about other species. He's talking about animals not people That they're getting this like really really upside down I think the footnotes in this section just like this this quote about Everybody knows animals and snoops and everybody else can look through your trash. There's footnotes here, which are very telling So footnotes, of course, you know a citation to another case the majority justice Why you know trying to like support the argument with like oh, there are other cases that say this or or you know reports or Studies or you know, what have you okay after animals? The word animals there is a citation. There's a footnote. It is to a North Dakota case About a dog bro, you know, they were you know those clerks were scrambling if they they come back with a case from North Dakota North Dakota this isn't a Supreme Court case. It's not even a federal. He's like we have nothing in Illinois. No, sir This is a North Dakota case that is about a dog going through someone's trash and dragging the trash to a neighbor's yard The neighbor puts that trash in his own trash can and then later when police have whatever Suspicion about the trash that neighbor gives consent for police to search the trash So that is a hilarious sequence of events by the way, that sounds like a law school hypothetical I do I truly do not believe that happened. No, absolutely. That sounds like such look. Oh, sorry the reason that's in my trash can is because my dog Like light bulb going off his head. He's like, yeah, my dog was going through the neighbor's trash Drag that into my yard and then I put it into my trash can How would the cops even know to ask the neighbor if any of the guys trash happens to be in your trash can this is so Ridiculous, it doesn't even make sense. No, it's it's a defense Right, the cops went through a guy's trash and he came up with a with a story about the neighbor actually This was a neighbor's trash not mine It's absolutely ridiculous and it also is not the factual sequence that happened here It also has nothing to do with this right. It has nothing to do with this and also does not establish in any way that it is a Regular Expectation that animals go through your trash and therefore you don't expect privacy from people With regards to your trash. It doesn't establish anything. All right, the next footnote about scavengers A citation to information about scavengers. This isn't even a citation to a case Justice White just says homeless people often go through trash basically just Ball desertion that's it drop in knowledge dude taking judicial notice of the unhoused And then also throws in a random reference to like a Seedy culture of dumpster diving and literally cites to like a dumpster diving coupon finding Handbook So again This is not supportive evidence or resource or reference that supports any piece of this argument Last footnote here. That's really really telling and Michael You actually brought this up that like there's an example like in the 1970s Henry Kissinger Like a paparazzi or somebody went through his trash and it actually ended up being not only like embarrassing to Kissinger and his wife which fuck them everything they did and everything they lived was humiliating, right? But it ended up being like a huge public scandal because Everybody was like that's too far. That's ridiculous People expect privacy even in their trash Everybody like rejected this and was like no absolutely not nobody should be allowed to do that leave that poor man alone Yeah, this paparazzo or whatever was wrong, but note justice White Siding this yeah after snoops saying and and in the citation in the footnote White says even prominent people Apparently like don't have this like really strong privacy, right? Because look this this paparazzo went through the trash This reference shows the opposite of what you are arguing in the majority It shows actually that this was a huge scandal the public By and large in a massive way rejected this was like this is ridiculous This is a violation of this person's privacy. This is a violation of this person's basically like home property you know personal personal privacy and Yeah, they're like this is gutter journalists gross. Yeah, and we don't like one instance Yeah, and the Supreme Court citing this as an example of number one that this happens in any kind of widespread way right and Number two that society does not have an expectation of privacy in trash. This is ridiculous Yeah, it's insane. It's insane. All right. Let's continue the opinion also says quote 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 Which like again, yeah, your trash guy might go through your trash, but does anyone actually? Expect that he will right that's what you're supposed to be trying to figure out Does anyone expect that their trash guy? Well, I would sort of assume that they're not going to yeah Considering they're just picking up tons of trash all day. It doesn't seem like yeah, right likely also I would assume and I bet I'm right about this even though I'm just guessing and forgot to look this up that most of these companies and Municipalities have policies that tell the trash dudes don't go through the don't go through people's trash Yeah, and it might just be like a CYA policy for the city or the company Yeah, you're increasing your own vulnerability to police questioning and investigation If you're looking through people's trash and you see stuff and now the police want to know what you got into and what you saw You know like also if you if you are like there a lot of trash companies are private And if you're trying to compete in the marketplace, you might want to be the company that doesn't look through your customers trash Yeah, yeah, you might not want to be the creeps who are rejected by society He continues to do this thing where it's just sort of like look other people could Be going through your trash and it's like yeah No I mean I expect it in fact the opposite Yeah, this really bugs me because like the third party thing not all third parties are the same and not all Instances of handing things over to third parties are the same right in the court just treats it as like this bright line thing like once you Something to a third party you have no more expectation of privacy in it and that's just not true Like yeah, they treat it like a rule at once you once you hand something over to someone all Privacy rights are waived. Yeah, that's not how anything works I mean I think just the facts of this go to the point that like no you actually do expect your trash to be very anonymous In private I expect them to do a very specific thing with my trash and that's bring it to the dump Yeah, and the cops had to ask them to segregate the trash, right? It wasn't like they just Could go up to the trash person at the end of the route and be like all right We want to find Billy Greenwood's trash because it's all Mixed in with a mess of shit and probably compressed multiple times and so like literally the trash collector has to do something they wouldn't normally do and Segregate it to keep it like identifiable right like that's the like the very facts of this sort of defeat the idea that your privacy Expectations are Evaporated once you hand it over like if anything you expect it to immediately become anonymized to just get in yeah With a bunch of other people's trash get intermingled and no longer identifiable to you before it even gets to the dump right right? Like that's what you expect and the idea that when you hand something over to a third party You just no longer have a reasonable expectation of privacy and think about How much like data and information you hand over to third parties? With the expectation that you're handing it over for a limited use and courts have weighed in on this and said in many instances You hand over information personal information you give up your property even physical, you know property objects Right you might give over to a third party in so many situations your mail Right there are court cases that say sealed mail is protected by the privacy interest and therefore Protected by the fourth amendment I mean the data on your phone the content of your emails all of this stuff right the fourth amendment applies Yeah, yeah, and when you hand over your trash to the trash guy you're not being like hey It's yours now dude do whatever like that's not like that's not the message that we all believe that we're conveying when we hand over the trash like Yo, this is for a little treat for you Whatever you feel like doing it's like go wild take this to the fucking landfill Yeah, you're mixing in with the massive pile of trash that way no one ever sees it again The entire premise of the the white majority seems built around like look We all know everyone's going through our trash all the time so right and that's just the way things are and it's like no I don't think that's true. I don't think that's correct at all. Yeah Yeah, there's also a very convenient for the majority kind of mixing up confusion about where the expectation of privacy applies the fourth amendment the Constitution is About government action the fourth amendment protects you from government intrusion from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government meaning of course in most situations law enforcement here justice white is talking about all of these examples of Not government parties right individuals who are not law enforcement other species that might have access to your trash and you might not have a Expectation of privacy from okay, so even assuming that we as a society do think that Neighbors and whoever it's not our trash isn't private from them We don't expect it to be to be private from all of these other parties That's still not the analysis because your expectation of privacy in terms of the fourth amendment is about what the state does Right, it doesn't matter if you think something is not private in terms of action by somebody else a non-state actor Right the Constitution is about the state action as to you I was thinking about this as like, you know If I want to withdraw more money than I can at an ATM I have to go to the bank and I have to like put in my little pin in a teller gets to look at my bank account and See what my balance is and if he or she wants probably look at all like my recent transactions There is a moment where that information is being revealed to a third party I don't expect that person to actually go through all my shit right then and there be like Oh, what has he been up to and I certainly do not expect him to print it out and hand it over to a cop, right? Right because hey I'm a third party. I can see this so therefore you have no privacy interest in it at all anymore Like what the fuck are you talking about like and this is something where like it's not just like they have the receptacle, right? They're looking into my bank account. They're looking at my transaction history And I still have an expectation of privacy in that that they're not just gonna disclose it to whoever it's bizarre how Disconnected the analysis is from how people think and behave Yeah He he also says Furthermore as we have held 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 and it's like bro Avert their eyes the cops fully Coordinated with the garbage man, dude, right? They fully talked to the garbage man and we're like preserve this guy's trash and then give it to us set it aside Not just once it's not like they were strolling by and there was paraphernalia on the ground outside this dude's house I I think that white is alluding to the plain view doctrine Which basically means that like if something is in plain view if it's in plain sight It's fair game for police. So if a cop like walks up to your car and Sees drug paraphernalia plainly visible in the front seat, right? The fact that it's in the car doesn't prevent the cop from being like hey, that's drugs your comm you've committed a crime, right? Right, but this isn't anything like that, right? There's nothing in plain sight here Yeah, the cops are just going through his trash like rats like raccoons there They're they're actively taking steps To coordinate with other people to get this man's trash Yeah, it has nothing to do with averting their eyes like a verdict. What are you fucking talking about? Yeah, what are you fucking talking about? At this point I was like what's going on here like what's going on with this decision, right? Yeah, oh the police cannot be expected to avert their eyes avert their eyes, dude. Yeah. Yeah, they had a full They did a search. Yeah Or they took action to reveal this to themselves, right turned a garbage man into a sea eye like What are you talking about what what's going on here, it's so it's like play it No, what I got avert my eyes now. It's like Fucking had his trash set aside and then opened it up and went through it, right like yeah It's what's going on At the end of the day This is just so disconnected from like the normal human experience and normal human expectations in a situation where the courts go Like the legal test revolves around figuring out like what would a reasonable person expect here And I just refused to believe that like if I had popped outside Justice White's house and just started like going going through his trash That he would be like nothing going on. He like nothing going on here I didn't expect that to be part of the standard part of the human experience I was handing that over to the world. Yes Enjoy sir enjoy my trash. I Just don't believe that is what Justice White actually thinks. No, no, it's it's absurd Hey everybody if you're like me your sleep is really important if I get a Few nights of bad sleep in a row. I'm a mess. 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They did it every week for two months before they found evidence of a crime like it was intrusive It was extremely Extended surveillance and intrusive repeated searching of his trash Which I think again goes to a lot of what we're saying that averting the eyes thing like what are you talking about? Right. Yeah, what are you talking about? Are we once again for the sixth time in the last two months? Refuse to avert our eyes from the trash that we have set aside and collected surreptitiously yes He also You know talks a lot and about what we talked about with the paparazzi and Kissinger He writes very well about it and I think it's something that justices don't do much anymore But I wish they did yeah because it's sort of like a why are we doing this sort of philosophical jerk-off exercise here about like What people would think we can just look at how people reacted to kissinger, right? Like it's very There's something very Tangible about this sort of analysis where he's like people were upset like what are we talking about like you want to know There's a reasonable expectation of privacy people were unhappy with the reporter the tabloid reporter who did this like You know like we don't need to do a thought exercise here. We can just look at how people reacted There's something very appealing to me about that. Yeah, he took an interesting tack though that I think is worth describing He talked a lot about like containers and Conveyances and the idea like there's a line of cases. That's like a very sort of small d democratic Approach to the fourth amendment about like how you carry things and the idea of being like well Yeah, sure you have an expectation of privacy and stuff you keep in like a Locked box right if you have like a safe or something like a lockbox. That's very secure only you know the then the code Yeah, like yeah, you have an expectation of privacy in that But why should someone who can't afford that right maybe who can't afford a fancy lockbox? Maybe can't afford a car to drive it around and it has to walk and carry something Why should they have less of an expectation of privacy in their things? And so yeah, also if you have an opaque plastic bag and you're carrying your stuff in that you also have an expectation of privacy In that like yeah, it's your stuff. It's closed. It's opaque. Yeah, just because it's less secure Doesn't mean you have no expectation of privacy in it and he's like sealed containers, man He used opaque trash bags. He sealed them like right of course He has an expectation of privacy in this This is like black letter law that we've decided what why is it different? when he's if he was like carrying this home then if he's leaving it out to be immediately anonymized in with a bunch of other people's trash and Disposed of seem for presumably forever right to never be tied to him or thought about again Like why would your expectation of privacy disappear right in that moment as you are like conveying it away Yeah, I think it's a it's a sharp way to think about it and sort of like highlights if you take this analysis seriously then then maybe The majority is analysis seriously then it seems like maybe rich people get more privacy more reason like right like oh you live in a Gated community you have an HOA you use like a very You know Tony private trash collector. No scavengers. No snoops. We kill raccoons on site. No scavengers. No snoops no cops Yeah, like yeah, do homeless people as justice white asserts they go through people's trash Do homeless people go through trash in justice whites neighborhood? I doubt it right out it You're just saying that if you're poor you must have a lower expectation of privacy and Unfortunately for the Constitution that means a lower expectation of privacy from the state right you are more exposed as a poor person Right, which of course we know in fact to be true But that's what this ruling is saying right and it is a really sharp point in the descent I think so yeah, actually I was gonna say so my one complaint about the descent would be that I don't think he He like teases this idea out with this line of cases But he doesn't explicitly say it and I feel like he should which is that the the practical outcome of this is that like yeah You live in a pricey apartment building where the trash is inside your you know Harking garage that's attached to your building you got an expectation of privacy that someone who has to take their trash to the curb Does not Moneyed interests get more privacy than poor people. Yeah under this rubric One thing I keep thinking of here is that like I feel like your expectation of privacy in your trash is even greater Then a lot of the situations where the law does Give you a lot of privacy protection. Yeah, like cars get like you know a medium amount of privacy Protection not as much as a home, but a good amount right cops just can't pop into your car certain containers like Michael is saying right like your bag Your suitcase right kinds of things just off the dome talking to the listeners Ask yourself would you rather have a stranger search your car or your trash? Right, I'm not in my mind. It's pretty glad rather have them search my car the shit That's that you throw into the trash like your receipts your bills, right? My fucking pin pin numbers probably on some piece of trash. I threw out at one point, right? Yeah, and you know as someone who takes a lot of medication your prescriptions You know prescription bottle can be in your trash like there's just so much personal information in your trash That sort of stuff is just Inherently private and I think people expect that they'll remain private and it's bizarre that he just sort of imagines that you're forfeiting it Then you compare that with something like a car where There's no like inherent reason. There's no there's no like abstract particularly abstract reason why you'd think that's ultra-private It's just that he's like well we we all sort of we all know you don't want people going through your car, right? It's your space. Yeah. Yeah, there's sort of like a normative analysis Well, like that the police shouldn't be able to just go through your car whenever they want, you know If you're gonna boil it down to one reason Why the car would be protected from the police? It's well cuz your shit is in there, right? Yeah, right? I should say the trash too. Yeah. Yeah, I think this is a really good point Peter about like just ask like take a Survey of the public and ask do you want a police officer right now to go through your car or to go through your trash? And yeah, I agree. I think most people would be like go through my car. Don't go through my trash, you know if given the choice and This really exposes the really problematic improper test that White is applying in the majority like the test here is they're supposed to be a Test applied about whether or not, you know There's an expectation of privacy in this trash for example and the test is like it's supposed to be a sort of like objective Standard the the question is does society at large Have a reasonable expectation of privacy in this area in your truck in the trash in the car You know, etc. And justice white says early on like we are not prepared. It's like this really strong pronouncement Saying that like we could only rule that there's an expectation of privacy in trash if Society is ready to make that pronouncement and we don't agree. We don't think society is ready You know, it's like this one day maybe Yeah, yeah, I guess like I guess in our barbarian Society we're not ready. We haven't we haven't achieved the level of enlightenment Yeah, it's very very strange, you know, there are lots of conditions that have to be met if you look at other Exceptions to the warrant requirement, right? The fourth amendment requires a warrant for searches and seizures that's what makes most searches and seizures reasonable and If Something is an unreasonable searcher seizure. Obviously, that's a violation of your fourth amendment rights But there are some legal exceptions to the warrant requirement where the fourth amendment where it's been ruled by You know courts over decades that it still is a reasonable searcher seizure even without a warrant and there's categories of Exceptions Peter mentioned plain view doctrine if something's in plain view Yeah, the cop doesn't have to get a warrant for it consent If if some if the cops come to your house and say can I search your house and you say yes, you can search my house You've consented the cops don't have to get a warrant. That's not an unreasonable search So there are these like big categories, but know how specific they are and like what conditions have to be met It's not just like this vague thing. There's also exceptions sometimes to the warrant requirement that are about like what you do with Pieces of property. This is like the concept in property law of like abandonment like if you truly intend to let something go and actually Intend to give meaningful legal ownership of a piece of property to somebody else then maybe you have less of an expectation of Privacy there or like curdle edge Curdle edge is a property concept That's like not just the building of your house or the structure of your house But there's an area around it your yard up to the fence this kind of idea that is also protected by the fourth amendment And there are these vague references in the majority here to like oh well trashes abandoned Or oh well trash is placed out on the street. That's outside the curdle edge of the home and Both of these I just want to make explicit like that as as a reference to Supporting the the holding are ridiculous because there are multiple Supreme Court cases that say that property Law concepts like abandonment and curdle edge do not override the constitutional protection around things that human beings have an expectation of privacy in right for abandonment like the Supreme Court has Recognized in other cases that even if somebody Abandons some piece of property they might still retain a privacy interest Even if you intend to give ownership of something to somebody else and let it go you might still retain a privacy interest in some Important things right for curdle edge. This is a super outdated standard and there's obviously there's very There's an important case which Michael I think you're about to talk about called cats which sets this privacy standard and cats says that the fourth amendment protects people Not places so the Supreme Court has ruled that things outside of the curdle edge of a home Obviously involve an expectation of privacy in tons of situations and sometimes like the flip of course Some things inside the curdle edge of the home don't involve an expectation of privacy So, you know just sort of like these vague references to like, oh, well, you know, there's these property law concepts abandonment curdle edge this kind of thing which also way in favor of Billy Greenwood not having a reasonable expectation of privacy in his trash. This is this is really really insufficient legal argument Yeah, it reminds me remember Florida v. Riley the case about airborne surveillance Yes, where the court the court basically held it's okay for like the police without a warrant Hover in a helicopter observe your yard from the sky as long as they're in a place that the public could legally be and It's predicated on the same Fallacy the same misunderstanding of the standard here by saying like well if it's technically accessible to the public then it's fine It's like no the question is do you expect? Read reasonably expect that you will be spied on from the sky. That is the question you need to be answering Right, it's your privacy that is right. It's a concern of the Fourth Amendment Yeah, do you reasonably expect that someone will go through your trash, right? Our producer pointed out if you're doing this accessibility Idea well the trash is accessible to scavengers and snoops and children and raccoons Isn't it just as accessible as your mail? Yeah, can they go through it? Can other people go through it? Right like what does the law expect there at this standard just does not make sense It's just a way for them to dodge the actual standard Yeah And so it's worth talking about the standard in this case cats because cats was like a it was a win Yeah, privacy rights right like before cats the Fourth Amendment was very much tethered in What it's called like trespass doctrine and the idea was like the police couldn't trespass Your your person or your property they couldn't go on to your property without your consent They couldn't like physically like remove your coat and go through your pockets and things Those are trespasses to your person put trespasses to your property and those things Implicate the Fourth Amendment those sorts of trespasses and that was like this sort of long and short of it and cats was like No, that was a case where There was no trespass because the cops just tapped like a public phone like a payphone and then just listen to this one guy who You regularly use the payphone right and listen to his conversations and and cats was like no you have a reasonable expectation Of privacy that your your phone calls even on public payphones are not being listened to by by police or anybody for that matter So this was supposed to expand The the sphere of your privacy right the realm of your personal life that is safe from government intrusion and Instead it has been sort of perverted in a lot of ways and used as like a Lever to open up more of your private life to Inspection by saying like yeah, no Raccoons can go through your trash. So why can't police a 747 might fly over your house at 30,000 feet. So why can't cops hover over it at 50 feet with binoculars? Your body's covered in bacteria and microscopic organisms. So clearly the police can search your person. It's yeah This is just basic basic science folks The fact that this is is what has happened with this test is especially like problematic now We're in an age of like digital surveillance and Just massive compilations of our data being out everywhere, right and handed over to third parties Oftentimes without our knowledge and without any real meaningful consent, right? Like maybe some click-rap bullshit, but you know, your devices are listening to you and serving you customized ads based on what you're talking about your doorbell is Videoing you and your neighborhood and if you are unlucky handing that over to the police when they ask for it like the world is becoming less private in general and so this attitude about like what is and isn't reasonable To expect to be private that the courts have taken which has been one that's very permissive of cops Violating your privacy has become a problem for for how society functions generally. Yeah Yeah, that's totally right cats was supposed to be expansive was supposed to expand the scope of what is protected by the fourth amendment by creating that standard about about the expectation of privacy and then what you see after cats and You see it so clearly in this in this case is the Supreme Court like Using the standard about the expectation of privacy to like shred it and to make sure That an expectation of privacy is like something that is just like so bare bones and not that the the more expansive View that cats was proposing Yeah, there's one more thing I want to talk about Rian and talked about this in prep And I think it's worth saying there's like a sort of a kill the cop in your head idea That we should tease out here because we have talked at length about how people we believe people would respond how we would Respond if you saw just like your neighbor going through your trash, right? You'd be upset and how people responded to like paparazzi Going through Kissinger's trash. They were upset, right? They didn't like it and I think all that's true at the same time in popular media Pops are regularly depicted as going through people's trash and it's depicted Heroically right and it's depicted favorably and people like it They like watching the cops find a shredded document and piece it together bit by bit until they've like revealed this secret You know smoke and gun that the murderer, right? Yeah, it's a savvy detective move, right? Exactly. Yeah, there's a segment of the public that enjoys watching the cops do things they would not accept from their neighbors, right and That's important for a couple reasons. I think one It's it's what allows the majority to get away with shit like this, right to like the test isn't You know the reasonable expectation of privacy isn't just like well It's okay if cops do it Yeah The whole point that justice white is making is that cops are being held to the same standard as everyone else, right? If you don't think your neighbors should be going through your trash then the cops can't either if you don't expect your neighbors to Go through your trash then your expectation of privacy in your trash is reasonable and the cops can't violate it They don't get to do Things other people don't get to do they don't get to violate your privacy in ways that other people don't get to Yeah, that's what makes it a reasonable expectation. I don't expect my neighbor to go through my trash Therefore the cops cannot go through my trash, right? That's the test and in that disjunction is like doing a lot of work here Yeah in the majority and I think it does a lot of work in general in what people accept and don't accept from the police Well and the proliferation of this police practice which now means that people accept this and right just here I'm a part of police work. Yeah, right like police are allowed to do that It's not a violation of your rights and people just kind of internalize that accept it wholeheartedly like that's because of this case Right. I'll also add throw me in as counsel or a argument here. I clean up 9-0 for the good guys I would just show up. They start asking questions. I say I'm gonna stop you. I brought a bag of each of your trash I had someone take and you can either give me this win right now or I'm gonna read it all into the public record It's just we're just gonna go through the contents folks. Let me know. Let me know where you side forensic analysis right here right now Mm-hmm Anthony and Scalius trash just a pile of oyster shells A single meat sweat drop Temple as you as you present this offer to him What a one what a one Yeah, they don't put free thinkers like me in front of Supreme Court for that reason Too powerful too effective Yeah, I Would do the same thing for it no matter what the case was about by the way give me the win or I'm gonna redo Into the record That's how absolute this expectation of privacy is right until you overturn California greenwood. I am going to be using this tactic All right folks next week Patreon episode mailbag episode send us any questions you have preferably about the law and not about like our favorite food or some Stupid shit like that. Yeah, you guys know I love to disparage our listeners questions and I'll be doing it in advance this time Follow us on social media at 5 4 pod subscribe to our patreon patreon.com 5 4 pod all spelled out for access to premium and ad free episodes special events our slack all sorts of shit See you next week. Bye everybody adios Five to four is presented by prologue projects this episode was produced by Allison Rogers The on nafak provides editorial support our website was designed by Peter Murphy Our artwork is by Teddy blanks at chips and why and our theme song is by spatial relations