People v. Anonymous
| Decision Date | 30 January 1979 |
| Citation | 415 N.Y.S.2d 921,99 Misc.2d 289 |
| Parties | The PEOPLE of the State of New York v. ANONYMOUS and Anonymous, Defendants. Justice's Court, Town of Greenburgh, Westchester County |
| Court | New York Justice Court |
The Court having held a Suppression Hearing on August 22, 1978 reserved decision after hearing testimony of the People's witness only, no Defendants' witnesses having been heard, and requested Memoranda of Law from both the People and the defendants and now, the Court having reviewed the defendants' papers filed in support of this motion to suppress and having reviewed all the People's papers filed in opposition thereto, the Court concludes that the constitutional issue is framed thusly:
A. That the counsel for the defendants contend that the defendants' Fourth Amendment rights under the United States Constitution were violated by members of the New York State Police when said officers made certain observations of the defendants in a public restroom in the Ardsley Service Area. The defendants argue that the sexual acts complained of, if done by the defendants were done while the defendants had a "reasonable expectation of privacy" at the specific location of commission and that the defendants relied on that reasonable expectation of privacy and that their constitutional rights to privacy guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment were violated. The defendants further contend that the surveillance constituted an "illegal search" and was done without probable cause.
The Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution, made applicable to State action by the Fourteenth Amendment, reads:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
The Court now makes the following findings:
1. That the area where the consensual sodomy allegedly occurred is not protected by the Fourth Amendment guarantees for the acts complained of took place admittedly in front of the public urinals in an area usable by all male members of the public before, during, and after, the alleged consensual sodomy took place. There are no locks on the two sets of entrance doors into this men's room and at any moment during the sodomy's commission any male patron could have walked in to use the facilities, even reasonably, those urinal bowls possibly blocked from access by the ongoing sodomy. In short, this area of occurrence was still a public place fully accessible to the eyes and use of the male public. The reasonable expectancy of privacy generated by the enclosed nature of the whole bathroom facility was only to exclude the using public male users from the gaze of the non-using public.
In defendants' cited case Kroehler v. Scott, 391 F.Supp. 1114, a 1975 decision, the Court said that stalls having no door was immaterial, as a stall constructed for the private use of the user was not a place of public access while in use. This reasoning cannot be extended to the area of the six urinals which as a single area, with no partitions between, is usable by as many members of the male public at the same time as there are urinals to accommodate them.
The trooper's testimony showed that prior to the sexual act and while the defendant participants were present in this public restroom several uninvolved members of the public entered and used the same urinal facilities. The fact that the sodomy took place without a member of the public walking into this restroom during its commission is in no way germane to an argument that the defendants had privacy during the commission and that this "privacy" was violated by the watching trooper. At any instant it is plain that a member of the public could have walked into the restroom and, have seen, in plain sight the commission of this sexual act. This fact alone destroys utterly the defendants' contention that the trooper's presence violated their "reasonable expectation of privacy".
It is this Court's belief that sexual acts between consenting adults, heterosexual and homosexual, Done in private (emphasis supplied) are absolutely beyond the right of the state to interfere but the "public" has rights, too. If in fact, as in the defendants' cited People v. Triggs case, 8 Cal.3d 884, 106 Cal.Rptr. 408, 506 P.2d 232, the California Supreme Court wishes to protect commode stalls with and without doors, this Court can acknowledge that Court's reasoning without necessarily finding same persuasive. However this Court will not analogize such reasoning and extend it to any area of multiple unenclosed urinals where several or a dozen or more male members of the public may congregate to use same at the same time. The public's right to expect privacy in such locations is reasonably limited to the performance of excretionary and ablutional acts indigenous to a restroom never for sexual acts of any nature.
There are limits to even privacy and it is clear to this Court that the "common area"...
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