State of N.M. v. CRANE
| Decision Date | 07 April 2011 |
| Docket Number | Docket No. 29,470 |
| Parties | STATE OF NEW MEXICO, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. KEVYN CRANE, Defendant-Appellee. |
| Court | Court of Appeals of New Mexico |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
APPEAL FROM THE DISTRICT COURT OF CURRY COUNTY Stephen K. Quinn, District Judge
Gary K. King, Attorney General Anita Carlson, Assistant Attorney General Santa Fe, NM for Appellant.
Law Works L.L.C. John A. McCall Albuquerque, NM for Appellee.
{1} The State appeals the district court's order suppressing evidence discovered by the warrantless search of sealed garbage bags left for collection in a motel dumpster. We consider whether we should extend State v. Granville, 2006-NMCA-098, 140 N.M. 345, 142 P.3d 933, in which this Court recognized an individual's right to privacy in sealed garbage left for collection in an alley behind a single-family home. We are not persuaded by the State's attempts to distinguish the expectation of privacy held by a motel guest who places garbage in a motel dumpster from the expectation of privacy held by an individual who places garbage outside of a residence. We affirm the suppression of the evidence.
{2} The following facts are undisputed. Police received an anonymous call from a patron of the Choice Inn reporting a strong chemical odor emanating from an adjacent motel room. Suspecting methamphetamine production, Agent Waylon Rains and Agent Steven Wright from the Clovis drug task force traveled to the motel to investigate. Agent Rains did not detect a chemical smell from outside Room 316, the reported motel room. From information provided by the motel staff, Agent Rains discovered that the registered guest in that room was Christopher Kidd. While conducting surveillance of Room 316 from the motel parking lot, Agent Rains observed an individual later identified as Kidd walking from that motel room to the motel's dumpster and throwing away an open box. Agent Rains went to the dumpster, removed the box, which had contained latex gloves, and found it unsealed and empty. While he was checking the box behind a cinder block wall, Agent Rains heard more garbage being discarded into the dumpster, although he was unable to view the individual discarding the garbage, and he heard a motel room door close shut. Presuming it was Kidd again discarding garbage, Agent Rains returned to the dumpster, found two sealed black plastic garbage bags, and removed them. Although they could not see the contents of the bags, the agents smelled a strong chemical odor. Without first obtaining a warrant, the agents opened and searched the bags. They found several items used to manufacture methamphetamine, including empty boxes for pseudoephedrine pills, an empty can of acetone, empty cans of Heet gas line antifreeze, and several matchbook covers.
{3} Based on this evidence, Agent Wright left the Choice Inn to obtain a search warrant. Agent Rains stayed at the motel to conduct further surveillance and saw two men leave Room 316. The men were later identified as Kidd and Defendant Kevyn Crane. Kidd carried a large red suitcase out of the motel room, placed it in a white car that drove up, and got in the car. Defendant got into a different vehicle that was parked in the motel lot. Agent Rains stopped Defendant, Kidd, and the driver of the white car, explained that police had received a tip about methamphetamine production, and asked them for identification. Defendant told the agent that he was staying in Room 316 and that he had to return to the room to retrieve his identification. Agent Rains accompanied him and did not see any signs of a meth lab, but he smelled the same chemical odor that had emanated from the garbage bags.
{4} Agent Wright returned with a search warrant, which permitted the agents to search Room 316 and the cars. They found additional manufacturing items and paraphernalia, including digital scales, glass pipes, baggies, muriatic acid, Coleman fuel, acetone, and a jar of bi-layered liquid. Agents also found personal letters to Defendant stored in a box in the closet. Defendant was charged with trafficking methamphetamine and possession of drug paraphernalia.
{5} Defendant filed a motion based on Granville to suppress the evidence found in the dumpster. The district court held an evidentiary hearing and granted Defendant's suppression motion as to the items sealed in the black plastic bags. In its findings of fact and conclusions of law, the district court determined that Defendant was sharing the motel room with Kidd and decided based on Granville that Defendant had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the motel room and the garbage discarded from the room. The district court therefore concluded that the agents could not search the refuse thrown in the dumpster without a warrant. Pursuant to NMSA 1978, Section 39-3-3(B)(2) (1972), the State appealed from this ruling.
{6} On appeal, the State argues, as it did below, that Defendant did not have an expectation of privacy that society is prepared to recognize as reasonable. The State does not argue that an exception to the warrant requirement applied. The parties agree, in light of Granville and the arguments raised in district court, that the relevant privacy interest should be examined under the New Mexico Constitution. As a result, our inquiry is limited to the reasonableness of a motel guest's expectation of privacy in his or her garbage under the New Mexico Constitution. See Granville, 2006-NMCA-098, ¶¶9, 34-35 (analyzing only the state constitutional claim of privacy in garbage from one's residence where the state did not argue the existence of another exception to the warrant requirement). We analyze these constitutional questions under a de novo standard of review. Id. ¶ 9.
{7} In Granville, this Court applied the interstitial approach announced in State v. Gomez, 1997-NMSC-006, ¶¶19, 22-23, 122 N.M. 777, 932 P.2d 1, and decided to depart from the Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. Granville, 2006-NMCA-098, ¶¶ 10-19, 33. We rejected the federal notion that "it is unreasonable to have an expectation of privacy in garbage when it is readily accessible to any member of the public." Id. ¶¶21-23 (). The Court in Granville adopted the approach taken by State v. Hempele, 576 A.2d 793, 799-808 (N.J. 1990), the seminal case recognizing a reasonable expectation of privacy in residential garbage left for collection under a state constitution. See Granville, 2006-NMCA-098, ¶¶ 15, 22-23. The New Mexico Constitution, Granville explained, provides greater privacy protections and recognizes that the contents of an individual's garbage reveals evidence of a person's most private traits and intimate affairs. See id. ¶¶25-26. The Court determined that when an individual conceals garbage from plain view by placing his or her personal items in a garbage can or an opaque bag, that action "exhibits an expectation of privacy that is not unreasonable." Id. ¶ 27.
{8} The State contends the present case contains a critical distinction from the facts of Granville that precludes the state constitutional protection, which is that the search was of garbage found in a motel dumpster, not garbage found in garbage cans outside a home. Given this circumstance, the State makes essentially one argument with two sub-parts: (1) a person placing garbage in a motel dumpster has a lesser expectation of privacy than he or she would have if the garbage were placed outside a home because (a) that person has less control over the disposition of the garbage and (b) the public has far greater access to garbage placed in a motel dumpster. The State maintains that, taken together, these circumstances establish that a person does not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in garbage placed in a motel dumpster.
{9} Before addressing the State's arguments, we consider the applicability of the two-prong analysis of privacy expectations set forth in Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 361 (1967) (Harlan, J., concurring), which considers first whether the defendant has an actual or subjective expectation of privacy and, second, "whether that expectation is one that society is prepared to recognize as reasonable." Granville, 2006-NMCA-098, ¶ 11. As this Court noted in Granville, since the decision in Greenwood, "other courts began to utilize the Katz test in relation to garbage searches." Granville, 2006-NMCA-098, ¶ 20. We further observed that the Greenwood Court passed over the first prong of the test and focused on the second prong—whether society would recognize as reasonable an expectation of privacy in garbage. Granville, 2006-NMCA-098, ¶¶ 11, 20. In addition, the New Jersey Supreme Court in Hempele rejected the two-prong Katz test and concluded that the New Jersey Constitution "requires only that an expectation of privacy be reasonable." Hempele, 576 A.2d at 802.
{10} We agree with the court in Hempele and conclude that under Article II, Section 10 of the New Mexico Constitution, the requisite inquiry is whether the expectation of privacy in a particular instance is reasonable; therefore, we need not consider whether Defendant had an actual expectation of privacy in the garbage. The United States Supreme Court itself has acknowledged that a subjective expectation of privacy can be irrelevant in certain cases.
For example, if the [g]overnment were suddenly to announce on nationwide television that all homes henceforth would be subject to warrantless entry, individuals thereafter might not in fact entertain any actual expectation or privacy regarding their homes, papers, and effects. Similarly, if a refugee from a totalitarian country, unaware of this Nation's traditions, erroneously assumed that...
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