State v. Vogel

• Decision Date: 24 August 1988
• Docket Number: No. 15961,15961
• Citation: 428 N.W.2d 272
• Parties: STATE of South Dakota, Plaintiff and Appellee, v. Michael C. VOGEL, Defendant and Appellant.
• Court: South Dakota Supreme Court

Page 272

428 N.W.2d 272

STATE of South Dakota, Plaintiff and Appellee, v. Michael C. VOGEL, Defendant and Appellant.

No. 15961.

Supreme Court of South Dakota.

Argued May 23, 1988.

Decided Aug. 24, 1988.

Mark A. Moreno, Hughes County Deputy State's Atty., Pierre, for plaintiff and appellee; Gary F. Colwill, Hughes County Deputy State's Atty., Pierre, on the brief.

Robert C. Riter, Jr., of Riter, Mayer, Hofer & Riter, Pierre, for defendant and appellant.

HENDERSON, Justice.

PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND/ISSUES

Appellant Michael Vogel (Vogel) was convicted of possession of more than one-half pound, but less than one pound, of marijuana after a non-jury trial in the circuit court for Hughes County. Vogel appeals his conviction and a sentence of two years in the State Penitentiary, contending that the trial court erred by finding no constitutional violation in State aerial and zoom lens photographic observations of marijuana plants within his home. The observations in question were a naked-eye sighting from an airplane, a subsequent aerial photographic run, and photography from a ridge behind Vogel's house. All three observations were made by Trooper Glen Miller of the State Highway Patrol.

Vogel urges that the use of zoom lenses to peer inside his home constituted an unreasonable search. He emphasizes that Trooper Miller was trespassing at the time of the third observation. These contentions create a constitutional issue of the reasonableness of the three police observations, as it relates to search and seizure law. Vogel filed various motions seeking to suppress the marijuana plants seized urging they were the fruits of an illegal search and seizure. A hearing was held upon these motions and the trial court ultimately entered a formal decision on the motions to suppress consisting of Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law, and Order. We affirm.

FACTS

On May 8, 1987, Trooper Glen Miller (Miller), an official pilot of the State Highway Patrol, flew over Vogel's geodesic dome residence in the course of a flight from Pierre to Sioux Falls. ¹ He left the airport in such a manner that he could pass over his own house and, in so doing, flew over Vogel's residence, which is near the home of Trooper Miller. Trooper Miller, then at an altitude of approximately 500 feet, noticed green leafy plants which appeared to be marijuana inside the dome's windows. Trooper Miller's flight on this day had no investigative motive behind it. We note, at this point, that Trooper Miller had been trained in the aerial detection and surveillance of marijuana at a school sponsored by the United States Drug Enforcement Administration.

Without seeking a search warrant, the trooper made a second flight over the dome on May 14, 1987, and took photographs with a 35 mm camera augmented with a zoom lens. The resulting photographs revealed that plants, which appeared to him to be marijuana, were behind most of the dome's windows. Later, Trooper Miller acquired a more sophisticated camera and zoom lens from the State Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI) on May 27, 1987. He then drove to the vicinity of Vogel's dome with the DCI camera and stopped at the nearest residence to the west. He asked and received permission from a woman who lived at the neighboring house to go up on the ridge behind her house and take photographs. Trooper Miller proceeded to the top of the ridge between the residences. Although Trooper Miller crossed a fence close behind the house he stopped at, he crossed no border fence, and did not see any "no trespassing" signs en route to his vantage point. From a distance of approximately 75 yards, he took photographs of the dome's windows, which clearly showed marijuana plants filling most of two windows. Nothing was visible in the windows except the plants. His vantage point was probably, though the record is unclear, on property owned by a defunct corporation, the Hinkley Realty Co., Inc., of which Vogel had been an officer.

Trooper Miller then secured a no-knock search warrant, and, with other police agents, proceeded to enter the dome and seize ten marijuana plants, each located directly behind a window. They found that a watering system for the plants had been set up inside the dome, using water tanks and garden hoses. Vogel arrived home in the middle of the search whereupon he was arrested. Vogel's Motion to Suppress was denied.

DECISION

Vogel argues that use of zoom lenses in photographing marijuana plants in the windows of his home violated a reasonable expectation of privacy that society should be prepared to observe, through application of Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967). As the plants were obviously within the curtilage of his home, where the Fourth Amendment extends maximum protection, Vogel insists that the observations which provided probable cause for the search warrant in this case were unreasonable searches and seizures. Additionally, Vogel contends that Trooper Miller's third observation was obtained through trespassing; consequently, the search was contrary to law.

Vogel's arguments are unconvincing. Miller's first overflight was not part of any investigative operation. His naked-eye sighting of the plant, which to his trained eye resembled marijuana, was wholly fortuitous. Also, Vogel has failed to establish that Miller's flight path violated any flight rules. Miller and his aircraft were at or above the minimum safe altitude (500 feet) for fixed-wing aircraft above sparsely populated areas. See 14 C.F.R. Sec. 91.79(c). See also Riley v. State, 511 So.2d 282, 288 n. 10 (Fla.1987); People v. Sabo, 185 Cal.App.3d 845, 852, 230 Cal.Rptr. 170, 174 (1986) (citing California v. Ciraolo, infra ). Both Riley and Sabo invalidated close, low-level helicopter observations by police, but in this case, we are ruling on observations from a fixed-wing aircraft. As quoted below, fixed-wing aircraft have a different legal significance:

As we have seen, Ciraolo's fixed wing aircraft flight observation at 1,000 feet within the public navigable airspace is not intrusive of privacy.... Public navigable airspace as to helicopters is not defined as a function of altitude....

We judicially notice the unique capabilities of the helicopter to gambol in the sky--turning, curtsying, tipping, hummingbird-like suspended in space, ascending, descending and otherwise confounding its fixed wing brethren doomed to fly straight, turn in caution and glidingly descend.

Sabo, 185 Cal.App.3d at 852-53, 230 Cal.Rptr. at 174-75. Riley similarly distinguished helicopters from other aircraft: "We do not believe that the details observed here from the vantage point of a circling and hovering helicopter could just as easily have been discerned by any person casually flying over the area in a fixed-wing aircraft." Riley, 511 So.2d at 288. The key concept, then, is found in California v. Ciraolo, 476 U.S. 207, 106 S.Ct. 1809, 90 L.Ed.2d 210 (1986):

That the area is within the curtilage does not itself bar all police observation. The Fourth Amendment protection of the home has never been extended to require law enforcement officers to shield their eyes when passing by a home on public thoroughfares.... "What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection." [Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351, 88 S.Ct. 507, 511, 19 L.Ed.2d 576, 582 (1967) ].

Ciraolo, 476 U.S. at 213, 106 S.Ct. at 1812, 90 L.Ed.2d at 216-17. The United States Supreme Court, in Ciraolo, held aerial observation of areas within the curtilage of a home violated no reasonable expectation of privacy:

One can reasonably doubt that in 1967 Justice Harlan considered an aircraft within the category of future "electronic" developments that could stealthily intrude upon an individual's privacy. In an age where private and commercial flight in the public airways is routine, it is unreasonable for respondent to expect that his marijuana plants were constitutionally protected from being observed with the naked eye from an altitude of 1,000 feet. The Fourth Amendment simply does not require the police traveling in the public airways at this altitude to obtain a warrant in order to observe what is visible to the naked eye.

Ciraolo, 476 U.S. at 215, 106 S.Ct. at 1813, 90 L.Ed.2d at 218 (footnote omitted). In the present case, we note that Vogel took no precautions whatever to mask any view of his windows. He was using sunlight to aid him in his criminal activity, thereby converting his home into a greenhouse for growing marijuana.

The second observation, involving aerial photography with a zoom lens, was also permissible. The fact that the flight was undertaken with the intent to focus on Vogel's home is simply irrelevant, as noted in Ciraolo:

The California Court of Appeal recognized that police have the right to use navigable airspace, but made a pointed distinction between police aircraft focusing on a particular home and police aircraft engaged in a "routine patrol." ... Whether this is a rational distinction is hardly relevant, although we find difficulty understanding exactly how respondent's expectations of privacy from aerial observation might differ when two airplanes pass overhead at identical altitudes, simply for different purposes. We are cited to no authority for this novel analysis or the conclusion it begat. The fact that a ground-level observation by police "focused" on a particular place is not different from a "focused" aerial observation under the Fourth Amendment.

Ciraolo, 476 U.S. at 214, 106 S.Ct. at 1813, 90 L.Ed.2d at 217 n. 2.

Vogel's argument that the use of zoom lens photography changes the result of this case is unsound.

If, for example, a person places a marijuana plant directly on his window sill so that it is observable from the street, his expectation of privacy concerning the plant is not significantly different from that in the case...