Court Rules Trash May Be Searched Without A Warrant
By Aaron Epstein, Inquirer Washington Bureau The Associated Press contributed to this articlePosted: May 17, 1988
WASHINGTON Police officers need no warrant to rummage through anyone's garbage left outside for collection, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday.
In a victory for law enforcement officials, the justices concluded, 6 2, that there is no right of privacy in discarded trash, even though it is contained in a closed can or an opaque bag.
"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," Justice Byron R. White wrote for the court majority.
The police, he added, "cannot reasonably be expected to avert their eyes
from evidence of criminal activity that could have been observed by any member of the public."
The decision, vigorously opposed by liberal Justices William J. Brennan Jr. and Thurgood Marshall, continued a court trend of easing Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.
"Members of our society will be shocked to learn that the court, the ultimate guarantor of liberty, deems unreasonable our expectation that the aspects of our private lives that are concealed safely in a trash bag will not become public," Brennan, supported by Marshall, wrote in dissent.
Over the last decade, the justices have gradually enlarged the investigative powers of government law enforcement agencies while cutting back individual rights of privacy.
The high court has given law enforcement officers greater leeway to search open fields and vehicles, to stop and question passengers at airports and workers at factory gates,
coach factory outlet, to investigate and detain travelers at borders and to inspect back yards from the air without warrants.
In yesterday's case, California v. Greenwood, the police in Laguna Beach,
toms shoes, south of Los Angeles, searched Billy Greenwood's garbage twice without a warrant. They found traces of narcotics, used the information to obtain warrants to search his home and discovered evidence of cocaine and hashish there.
Two state courts in California dismissed charges against Greenwood and a
codefendant,
marc jacobs, Dyanne Van Houten, concluding that the searches violated the Fourth Amendment.
White, joined by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist,
louis vuitton, Harry A. Blackmun,
louboutin replica, John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor and Antonin Scalia, disagreed. They said that the vast majority of federal and state courts have upheld warrantless police searches of garbage discarded in public areas. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, the court's newest member, did not take part in the case. Kissinger's trash by a reporter for a tabloid publication who then wrote about his findings.
But Brennan countered that "the public response roundly condemning the reporter" showed that society recognized the incident as an unreasonable invasion of privacy.
In other action yesterday, the court took these steps:
ANTITRUST. In a ruling that the justices acknowledged could make doctors reluctant to serve on "peer review" panels,
coach outlet store, the court unanimously restored an Astoria, Ore.,
polo ralph lauren outlet, surgeon's $2.2 million antitrust award against fellow doctors in his city. Dr. Timothy A. Patrick sued partners of the Astoria Clinic in 1981,
ghd uk, alleging that they conspired to revoke his staff privileges at the city's only hospital because they resented his opening a private practice in competition with the clinic.
A federal jury awarded Patrick $1.95 million against the clinic and three of its physician partners. The judge ordered the lawyers to be paid $228,
mcm bags,000.
An appeals court reversed the ruling,
mulberry outlet, citing the "state action " doctrine. It said that because state law required hospital doctors to maintain peer review of staff physicians, their actions represented governmental action immune from federal antitrust law.
The high court said the doctrine does not apply because no state official reviews the doctors' peer review decisions.
The opinion said the justices were aware that the threat of antitrust liability would prevent physicians from participating openly and actively in important peer review proceedings, but it said Congress, not the high court, must take care of that.
ABORTION. In a New Jersey case, the court let stand a ruling that pregnant inmates have the right to free abortions if they cannot afford them.
The justices, without comment, refused to hear arguments by prison officials in Monmouth County that no such right exists if an abortion is unnecessary to preserve an inmate's life or health.
The federal appeals court in Philadelphia had ruled in November that inmates have a constitutional right to even elective, nontherapeutic abortions. It barred enforcement of a Monmouth County Correctional Institution policy that required inmates to get a court order allowing them to obtain a nontherapeutic abortion and required them to pay for such abortions.
The Supreme Court has ruled that the federal government and states are not obligated to pay for even medically necessary abortions sought by women on welfare, but it has also ruled that the Eighth Amendment, which bans cruel and unusual punishment, requires prisons to provide adequate medical care.
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