State v. McMurray

• Decision Date: 11 March 2015
• Docket Number: No. A12–2266.,A12–2266.
• Citation: 860 N.W.2d 686
• Parties: STATE of Minnesota, Respondent, v. David Ford McMURRAY, Appellant.
• Court: Minnesota Supreme Court

860 N.W.2d 686

STATE of Minnesota, Respondent

v.David Ford McMURRAY, Appellant.

No. A12–2266.

Supreme Court of Minnesota.

March 11, 2015.

Lori Swanson, Attorney General, Saint Paul, Minnesota; and Michael K. Junge, McLeod County Attorney, Elizabeth Smith, Assistant McLeod County Attorney, Glencoe, Minnesota, for respondent.

Cathryn Middlebrook, Chief Appellate Public Defender, Benjamin J. Butler, Assistant Public Defender, Saint Paul, Minnesota, for appellant.

Cort C. Holten, Jeffrey D. Bores, Chestnut Cambronne PA, Minneapolis, Minnesota, for amicus curiae Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association Legal Defense Fund.

OPINION

WRIGHT, Justice.

In this case, we consider whether there is a principled basis for interpreting Article I, Section 10, of the Minnesota Constitution to require greater protection than the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution in the context of a warrantless search of garbage set out for collection in an area accessible to the public. Applying the principles articulated in Kahn v. Griffin, 701 N.W.2d 815 (Minn.2005), to the facts of this case, we do not have a “clear and strong conviction” that there is a principled basis for interpreting Article I, Section 10, of the Minnesota Constitution to require greater protection than the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. We therefore affirm.

On January 25, 2012, a mandated reporter informed the Hutchinson police that appellant David Ford McMurray's daughter saw her mother with “a pipe believed to be used for drugs.” Officer Erlandson, an investigator with Hutchinson Police Services and a member of the Southwest Metro Drug Task Force, checked police records and learned that both McMurray and his wife previously had been arrested for controlled substance violations.

Officer Erlandson contacted the commercial truck driver who collects McMurray's garbage and sought the driver's assistance in securing the garbage that McMurray placed at the curb for collection. On February 2, 2012, Officer Erlandson observed the driver pick up the garbage from the curb outside McMurray's home and immediately thereafter met the driver in a predetermined location to retrieve the garbage. When Officer Erlandson searched the garbage, he found several plastic bags containing white residue, which later tested positive as methamphetamine. The garbage also contained drug paraphernalia and documents belonging to McMurray and his wife.

The next day, based on the information police received from the mandated reporter and the warrantless search of McMurray's garbage, Officer Erlandson obtained a warrant to search McMurray's home. Police executed the search warrant and found McMurray with two other people in an upstairs bedroom. While searching the bedroom, police found, inside a clothes basket, plastic bags containing a “crystal like substance” and a letter addressed to McMurray. A laboratory test confirmed that one of the plastic bags contained 3.3 grams of methamphetamine.

McMurray was charged with third-degree possession of a controlled substance. Minn.Stat. § 152.023, subds. 2(a)(1), 3(b) (2014). McMurray moved to suppress the evidence seized from his home. In support of the motion to suppress, McMurray argued that the warrantless search of his garbage violated Article I, Section 10, of the Minnesota Constitution, which provides, “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 warrant shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the person or things to be seized.” He further argued that without the evidence found in his garbage, the application for a warrant to search his home was not supported by probable cause, and that the search of his home was, therefore, unconstitutional. The State urged the district court to deny the suppression motion, citing State v. Oquist, 327 N.W.2d 587, 591 (Minn.1982), in which we held “the defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy with respect to the contents of the plastic bags placed in or near his open garbage can” when the contents were examined “without trespassing on the defendant's premises.” The district court denied the motion to suppress, concluding that Oquist was controlling.

McMurray waived his right to a jury trial and submitted his case to the district court on stipulated facts under Minn. R.Crim. P.26.01, subd. 3. The district court found McMurray guilty of third-degree possession of a controlled substance and imposed a 24–month sentence, which is the mandatory minimum sentence for a person previously convicted of a felony controlled substance crime. See Minn.Stat. § 152.023, subd. 3(b).

McMurray appealed to the court of appeals, arguing among other grounds that the district court committed reversible error by denying his motion to suppress. The court of appeals affirmed, stating that “[f]ollowing United States Supreme Court precedent, Minnesota courts have consistently held that garbage left on a curb or adjacent to an alley that is seized in a routine curbside pickup does not constitute an illegal search.” State v. McMurray, No. A12–2266, 2013 WL 5021206, at *2 (Minn.App. Sept. 16, 2013).

We granted McMurray's petition for further review on the issue of whether Article I, Section 10, of the Minnesota Constitution requires greater protection than the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution in the context of a warrantless search of garbage set out for collection in an area accessible to the public.

I.

In California v. Greenwood, 486 U.S. 35, 108 S.Ct. 1625, 100 L.Ed.2d 30 (1988), the United States Supreme Court concluded that an individual does not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in garbage left at the curb. Id. at 39–41, 108 S.Ct. 1625. Consequently, a warrantless search of such garbage does not violate the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Id. Acknowledging Greenwood, McMurray concedes that the Fourth Amendment does not prohibit warrantless searches of garbage set out for collection. Despite the fact that the language of Article I, Section 10, of the Minnesota Constitution is substantially similar to the language of the Fourth Amendment,¹ McMurray asks us to interpret Article I, Section 10, to provide greater protection than the Fourth Amendment because in his view the United States Supreme Court's reasoning in Greenwood is not persuasive.² To support his argument, McMurray relies heavily on the Greenwood dissent and the decisions of a minority of other state courts.³

As a separate source of rights, the Minnesota Constitution may under certain circumstances provide greater protection than the United States Constitution. Kahn, 701 N.W.2d at 823–24. Yet when independently interpreting the Minnesota Constitution, we will not reject a United States Supreme Court interpretation of identical or substantially similar language “merely because one prefers the opposite result.” Women of the State of Minn. by Doe v. Gomez, 542 N.W.2d 17, 30 (Minn.1995). Our precedent establishes that we approach the responsibility of interpreting identical or substantially similar language with restraint. Kahn, 701 N.W.2d at 828. As we follow the general principle of “favoring uniformity” with the United States Constitution, we decline to “lightly reject” a United States Supreme Court interpretation of “identical or substantially similar language.” Id. at 824. Rather, when a federal constitutional provision has the same or substantially similar language and the United States Supreme Court has interpreted that language, we will not construe the Minnesota Constitution as granting greater protection for individual rights “unless there is a principled basis to do so.” Id. (citing State v. Harris, 590 N.W.2d 90, 97–98 (Minn.1999) ).

In Kahn, we identified a nonexclusive list of factors that may be considered in determining whether there is a principled basis for interpreting the Minnesota Constitution to provide greater protection than the United States Constitution:

(1) the text of the state Constitution, (2) the history of the state constitutional provision, (3) relevant state case law, (4) the text of any counterpart in the U.S. Constitution, (5) related federal precedent and relevant case law from other states that have addressed identical or substantially similar constitutional language, (6) policy considerations, including unique, distinct, or peculiar issues of state and local concern, and (7) the applicability of the foregoing factors within the context of the modern scheme of state jurisprudence.

Id. at 829. When the text of our state constitution is materially identical to the federal constitution, as it is here, we have construed the Minnesota Constitution to provide greater protection than the United States Constitution: (1) when the United States Supreme Court “ ‘has made a sharp or radical departure from its previous decisions' and we ‘discern no persuasive reason to follow such a departure’ ”; (2) when the Court has “retrenched on a Bill of Rights issue”; or (3) when the Court precedent “ ‘does not adequately protect our citizens' basic rights and liberties.’ ” Rew v. Bergstrom, 845 N.W.2d 764, 795 (Minn.2014) (quoting Kahn, 701 N.W.2d at 828).

In light of the well-established principles articulated in Kahn, the issue presented in this case is not whether the reasoning of the Supreme Court in Greenwood is persuasive.

Rather, the issue is whether we have a “clear and strong conviction” that there is a “principled basis” for us to interpret Article I, Section 10, of the Minnesota Constitution to provide greater protection from warrantless searches of garbage set out for collection than the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. We therefore consider whether the legal issue in this case presents one of the three situations articulated in Kahn, 701 N.W.2d at 828.

We first consider...