State v. Sampson

765 A.2d 629, 362 Md. 438, 2001 Md. LEXIS 13

• Court: Court of Appeals of Maryland
• Decided: January 16, 2001
• Docket: 17, Sept. Term, 2000
• Status: Published

Opinions

WILNER, Judge.

Respondent was convicted in the Circuit Court for Dorchester County of possession of cocaine and maintaining a common nuisance. Those convictions rested in large part on evidence seized from her home pursuant to a search warrant. The probable cause for the warrant, in turn, was based principally on evidence taken by the police from trash bags that Respondent left out for collection by the municipal trash collector. The issue is whether the seizure of the trash bags and their contents violated respondent’s rights under the Fourth Amendment and, as a result, fatally tainted the warrant, thereby making the evidence seized pursuant to it inadmissible. The Court of Special Appeals resolved that issue in respondent’s favor and reversed her convictions. Sampson v. State, 130 Md.App. 79, 744 A.2d 588 (2000). We disagree and shall reverse the judgment of the Court of Special Appeals.

BACKGROUND

The Cambridge City police became suspicious of respondent when an area merchant reported to them that respondent had engaged the merchant to repair her car and had paid for the repairs with more than $3,000 in cash. Finding that to be unusual, the merchant took the cash to the police station, where an officer had the money scanned by a K-9 unit dog for the presence of controlled dangerous substances. The dog made a positive alert, following which Officer Lewis ascertained the identity and address of respondent and learned that she (1) had been convicted previously of possession and possession with intent to distribute cocaine, and (2) was living with a man who at least one citizen in the community informed the police was a major cocaine dealer.

With that information, Officer Lewis began looking for evidence by searching through respondent’s trash.¹ He learned that the trash was routinely collected from respondent’s home on Monday and Thursday mornings. On six successive trash collection days, either Officer Lewis or Officer Bromwell drove to the block where respondent lived just before the trash collector was due to arrive, picked up the trash bag(s) set out by her for collection, and took them to the police station, where they were opened and searched. The trash bags were opaque, made of white or green plastic and tied at the top. Among other things found in the bags were clear plastic baggies, with the bottom corners cut out, that contained traces of cocaine.

Respondent’s home has a rather shallow front yard that leads to a municipal sidewalk, on the far side of which are the curb and the public street. In the yard near the sidewalk is a tree, and the trash bags were left in front of the tree, about two to three feet from the sidewalk. Standing on the sidewalk, the officer simply reached over the two to three feet of lawn and picked up the bag(s) without stepping on the lawn itself.

Respondent claimed at the suppression hearing that she had a “No Trespassing” sign posted prominently in her front window. The two officers testified that the sign was not present during the month-long period that they picked up the trash but was put up later. The trial judge credited the officers’ testimony.

DISCUSSION

Whether it is permissible for the police, either directly or through prior arrangements with a trash collector, to seize and search through trash routinely set out by persons for collection has been the subject of considerable discussion in both court opinions and academic commentary. The basic principles guiding the discussion, at least since 1988, are found in California v. Greenwood, 486 U.S. 35, 108 S.Ct. 1625, 100 L.Ed.2d 30 (1988), in which the Court held that the police do not intrude upon Fourth Amendment rights when, through a prior arrangement with the regular trash collector, they obtain, open, and search through trash containers set out on the curb “outside the curtilage of a home” for collection. The debate in the courts has been whether that holding is limited to those circumstances, or whether it also embraces the situation that we have here, where the resident places the trash container within the curtilage of the property and the police take the trash directly from the property, rather than from the trash collector.² Most of the courts have not found those differences to be significant; nor do we.

The touchstone of the Fourth Amendment analysis is Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967), which tested whether the placement of a listening device on the roof of a public telephone booth constituted a violation of the Fourth Amendment rights of persons using the booth. The questions framed by the parties were whether a public telephone booth is a “constitutionally protected area” such that attachment of the listening device violated the right to privacy of a user of the booth, and whether physical penetration of a “constitutionally protected area” is necessary for a search to be regarded as violative of the Fourth Amendment. The Court began by expressly rejecting that formulation of the issue, noting that “the correct solution of Fourth Amendment problems is not necessarily promoted by incantation of the phrase ‘constitutionally protected area.’ ” Id. at 350, 88 S.Ct. at 510, 19 L.Ed.2d at 581. Elucidating that point, the Court stated:

“[Tjhis effort to decide whether or not a given ‘area,’ viewed in the abstract, is ‘constitutionally protected’ deflects attention from the problem presented by this case. For the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection. But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected.”

Id. at 351-52, 88 S.Ct. at 511, 19 L.Ed.2d at 582 (citations omitted) (footnote omitted).

Turning then to the Government’s argument that the lack of physical penetration of the telephone booth withdrew the matter from Fourth Amendment concern, the Court noted that, although at one time the absence of penetration was thought to foreclose further Fourth Amendment inquiry, that view no longer prevailed — that the underpinnings of that notion, set forth in cases such as Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 48 S.Ct. 564, 72 L.Ed. 944 (1928) “have been so eroded by our subsequent decisions that the ‘trespass’ doctrine there enunciated can no longer be regarded as controlling.” Katz, supra, 389 U.S. at 353, 88 S.Ct. at 512, 19 L.Ed.2d at 583.

In a concurring opinion, Justice Harlan noted that, although the Fourth Amendment did protect people rather than places, the protection it afforded required reference to a place. In a cogent and oft-quoted statement, he regarded the rule as being that “there is a twofold requirement, first that a person have exhibited an actual (subjective) expectation of privacy and, second, that the expectation be one that society is prepared to recognize as ‘reasonable.’ ” Id. at 361, 88 S.Ct. at 516, 19 L.Ed.2d at 588 (Harlan, J., concurring). Thus, he explained, “a man’s home is, for most purposes, a place where he expects privacy, but objects, activities, or statements that he exposes to the ‘plain view’ of outsiders are not ‘protected’ because no intention to keep them to himself has been exhibited.” Id.

Greenwood fed, to a large extent, on Katz, and, in particular, on Justice Harlan’s concurring opinion in Katz. After her suspicions had been aroused by other information indicating that Greenwood was engaged in drug trafficking, a police officer arranged with the neighborhood’s regular trash collector to deliver to her the trash bags picked up from the street in front of Greenwood’s house, and she used the evidence found in those bags to obtain a search warrant. The California courts dismissed the ensuing charges, finding that the warrantless trash searches violated the Fourth Amendment.³

The Supreme Court reversed. Conceding that Greenwood may have entertained some subjective expectation of privacy in that he “did not expect that the contents of [his] garbage bags would become known to the police or other members of the public,” Greenwood, supra, 486 U.S. at 39, 108 S.Ct. at 1628, 100 L.Ed.2d at 36, the Court concluded that such an expectation was not objectively reasonable:

“Here, we conclude that respondents exposed their garbage to the public sufficiently to defeat their claim to Fourth Amendment protection. 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. Moreover, respondents placed their refuse at the curb for the express purpose of conveying it to a third party, the trash collector, who might himself have sorted through respondents’ trash or permitted others, such as the police, to do so. Accordingly, having deposited their garbage ‘in an area particularly suited for public inspection and, in a manner of speaking, public consumption, for the express purpose of having strangers take it,’ respondents could have had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the inculpatory items that they discarded.”

Id. at 40-41, 108 S.Ct. at 1628-29, 100 L.Ed.2d at 36-37 (emphasis added) (footnotes omitted) (citations omitted) (quoting United States v. Reicherter, 647 F.2d 397 (3d Cir.1981)).

Reinforcing its conclusion that society would not accept as reasonable Greenwood’s subjective claim to an expectation of privacy, the Court noted “the unanimous rejection of similar claims by the Federal Courts of Appeals” and the overwhelming rejection of such claims by the State appellate courts, citing a substantial number of Federal and State cases. Id. at 41-43, 108 S.Ct. at 1629-30, 100 L.Ed.2d at 37-38. In support of her claim that the Ch‘eenwood holding must be limited to its facts, respondent avers that most of the cases cited by the Greenwood Court involved either trash left in a public place outside the curtilage of the home or an initial pickup by the trash collector, not by the police. A careful reading of those cases shows, however, that, in some, those factors were not necessarily present and that, where they were present, they were not regarded as significant.⁴ The cases cited in Greenwood, as a general rule, simply took the position that, when one places trash in, or even near, a public way for collection, the person loses any reasonable expectation of privacy in the material. The essence of the holdings was expressed in United States v. Crowell, 586 F.2d 1020, 1025 (4th Cir.1978), cert. denied, 440 U.S. 959, 99 S.Ct. 1500, 59 L.Ed.2d 772 (1979):

“[Ajbsent proof that a person has made some special arrangement for the disposition of his garbage inviolate, he has no reasonable expectation of privacy with respect to it once he has placed it for collection. The act of placing it for collection is an act of abandonment and what happens to it thereafter is not within the protection of the fourth amendment.”

The law that has emerged since Greenwood is essentially the same as it was before that case was decided, although, as a general rule, it is based less on the property concept of abandonment than on the conclusion that, by depositing the trash in a place accessible to the public, for collection, the depositor has relinquished any reasonable expectation of privacy. See, however, United States v. Redmon, 138 F.3d 1109, 1114 (7th Cir.1998), and compare with concurring opinion by Flaum, J., at 1125-29. The courts have not read Greenwood as being limited to situations in which the trash bags were either placed outside the curtilage or were taken from the property by the regular trash collector and then delivered to the police, although in some, one or both of those circumstances were present. One of the clearest expositions of the now-predominant view is in State v. Kimberlin, 267 Kan. 659, 984 P.2d 141 (1999). The trash bags there were seized by the police from “a little ditch area” located five to eight feet from the street and 35 to 40 feet in front of the defendant’s house, where they had been placed for collection. The area was within a municipal easement but was assumed to be within the curtilage of the house. Kimberlin made the same argument advanced by respondent here — that Greenwood was distinguishable because it involved trash placed outside the curti-lage. The Kansas court rejected the argument, noting that “[t]he Greenwood opinion used the term [curtilage] one time, in the opening sentence, and the curtilage concept was not part of the Court’s rationale in deciding the issue.” Kimber-lin, supra, 984 P.2d at 144. It viewed the Greenwood holding as “based upon Greenwood’s lack of a reasonable expectation of privacy in his discarded trash” and held that “under Greenwood, the search of defendant’s trash herein was not constitutionally impermissible as claimed.” Id.

A rationale for that view was given in United States v. Hedrick, 922 F.2d 396 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 502 U.S. 847, 112 S.Ct. 147, 116 L.Ed.2d 113 (1991), where the trash bags were kept by the defendant throughout the week on a driveway 50 feet from the house, 20 feet from an unattached garage, and 18 feet from a public sidewalk, and were picked up from that location by the trash collectors. The issues were whether the containers were within the curtilage and, if so, whether that affected the applicability of Greenwood. The court held that the containers were technically within the curtilage, but, citing Katz v. United States, supra, 389 U.S. 347, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576, held that “the mere intonation of curtilage ... does not end the inquiry.” Hedrick, supra, 922 F.2d at 399.

Addressing the second issue, the court first drew a distinction between trash bags and other containers that might be found within the curtilage, the distinction being the “common knowledge” that “members of the public often sort through other people’s garbage, and that the garbage is eventually removed by garbage collectors on a regular basis.” Id. at 399. The question then became whether an “extension” of Greenwood could be justified either on the ground that placement of the garbage at the point chosen by the defendant made it readily accessible to the public or on the notion that the intent to convey the garbage to the collector itself sufficed to eliminate any expectation of privacy. The court rejected the second prospect as being inconsistent' with the purpose of the Fourth Amendment, as it would allow the police to make warrantless searches of cans placed next to the house, without regard to their accessibility to the public as a whole and without probable cause. The proper focus, then, was whether the garbage was “readily accessible to the public so as to render- any expectation of privacy objectively unreasonable.” Id. at 400. That principle too, the court noted, was not without limit: the willingness of the public to trespass on private property to search through garbage could not be allowed to defeat the Fourth Amendment expectation of privacy. Parroting some of the language used in Greenwood, the court declared:

“Where, however, the garbage is readily accessible from the street or other public thoroughfares, an expectation of privacy may be objectively unreasonable because of the common practice of scavengers, snoops, and other members of the public in sorting through garbage. In other words, garbage placed where it is not only accessible to the public but likely to be viewed by the public is ‘knowingly exposed’ to the public for Fourth Amendment purposes.”

Id.

On that premise, the court continued, if garbage is placed at the curb, the public has ready access to it from the street and can be expected to utilize that ability. Garbage cans placed next to the house or garage, however, are not sufficiently accessible to the public to make an expectation of privacy unreasonable. In the case at hand, the court found that the cans were close enough to the sidewalk to be readily accessible to the public and thus knowingly exposed. Hedrick, has been confirmed on several occasions by the Seventh Circuit Court. See United States v. Shanks, 97 F.3d 977 (7th Cir.1996) (garbage containers located on narrow strip of land between garage and alley; no expectation of privacy even if they were within the curtilage), cert. denied, 519 U.S. 1135, 117 S.Ct. 1002, 136 L.Ed.2d 881 (1997); United States v. Redmon, supra, 138 F.3d 1109 (no reasonable expectation of privacy in trash cans left for collection in common driveway just outside garage); United States v. Long, 176 F.3d 1304 (10th Cir.) (trash bags placed for collection on trailer located in grassy area seven feet from garage and three feet from alley; even if within curtilage, there would be no expectation of privacy), cert. denied, 528 U.S. 921, 120 S.Ct. 283, 145 L.Ed.2d 237 (1999).

When faced with the uncommon situation of trash containers being left for collection close to the house, the courts have, indeed, been wary of finding the relinquishment of an expectation of privacy. See, e.g., United States v. Certain Real Property Located at 987 Fisher Road, 719 F.Supp. 1396 (E.D.Mich. 1989) (garbage bags placed against back wall of house protected from warrantless search). In the more normal case of containers left at or near public streets, alleys, or other areas readily accessible to the public, there has been near unanimity in finding no reasonable expectation of privacy, whether or not the containers are technically within the curtilage. A few courts have found a violation under State law,⁵ but none have interpreted Greenwood as being limited in the manner suggested by respondent or by the dissent, as requiring either that the containers be placed outside the curtilage or that they be picked up first by the regular trash collector. See United States v. Wilkinson, 926 F.2d 22, 27 (1st Cir.) (Opinion by Breyer, J., rejecting distinction based on fact that containers left on defendant’s lawn and not on curb itself), cert. denied, 501 U.S. 1211, 111 S.Ct. 2813, 115 L.Ed.2d 985 (1991). Most of the courts have applied Greenwood without any discussion of whether the containers were inside or outside the curtilage. See United States v. Trice, 864 F.2d 1421 (8th Cir.1988), cert. denied, 491 U.S. 914, 109 S.Ct. 3206, 105 L.Ed.2d 714 (1989); Walls v. State, 536 So.2d 137 (Ala.Crim.App.1988), cert. denied, 490 U.S. 1020, 109 S.Ct. 1744, 104 L.Ed.2d 181 (1989); People v. Hillman, 834 P.2d 1271 (Colo.1992); State v. Fisher, 591 So.2d 1049 (Fla.App.1991); Perkins v. State, 197 Ga.App. 577, 398 S.E.2d 702 (1990); People v. Collins, 106 Ill.2d 237, 87 Ill.Dec. 910, 478 N.E.2d 267, cert. denied, 474 U.S. 935, 106 S.Ct. 267, 88 L.Ed.2d 274 (1985); People v. Thivierge, 174 Mich.App. 258, 435 N.W.2d 446 (1988); In re Forfeiture of U.S. Currency, 181 Mich.App. 761, 450 N.W.2d 93 (1989); State v. Texel, 230 Neb. 810, 433 N.W.2d 541 (1989); State v. Herrick, 567 N.W.2d 336 (N.D.1997); State v. Payne, 104 Ohio App.3d 364, 662 N.E.2d 60 (1995).

This approach is entirely consistent with Greenwood and is the only reasonable one. The focus is on whether the person placed his or her trash, for collection, in an area at or near a public way or area, so that it was readily accessible to the public. If so, it matters not whether that area is technically within or without the boundary of the curtilage. As the North Dakota court stated in State v. Herrick, supra, 567 N.W.2d at 340, “[w]e will not engage in measuring expectations of privacy with a ruler.” When dealing with trash set out for collection, making the perimeter of the curtilage decisive for Fourth Amendment purposes lacks any reasonable basis and would lead to wholly irrational results. Curtilage is a legal concept, not a surveying one. Most people probably have no idea what the word “curtilage” even means, much less where, on their property, it ends. Nor do they, as a practical matter, give a moment’s thought to whether the place where they set their trash for collection is within or without this unmarked boundary.

To suggest that the concept of curtilage has any meaning to people in the context of placing their trash for collection is absurd. They put their trash containers where they must put them if they wish the collector to take them. If there is no sidewalk or curb, the containers are likely to be placed on the lawn, close to the street or alley; if there is a strip between a sidewalk and the street, they are likely to be placed there; if the street immediately abuts a sidewalk, they may well be placed, as respondent did, on the lawn at the edge of the sidewalk, to avoid obstructing pedestrian traffic on the sidewalk. If there is a common area serving several residential units, they will be placed in that area. We have been referred to no empirical evidence that people have different privacy expectations depending on whether the place they put their trash for collection is within or without what, in hindsight, a court later finds to be the curtilage. Nor would it be reasonable to give credence to any such different expectations. If the trash is placed for collection at a place that is readily accessible, and thus exposed, to the public, the person has relinquished any reasonable expectation of privacy. The Court of Special Appeals erred in concluding otherwise.

JUDGMENT OF COURT OF SPECIAL APPEALS VACATED; CASE REMANDED TO THAT COURT WITH INSTRUCTIONS TO CONSIDER THE REMAINING ISSUES; COSTS IN THIS COURT TO BE PAID BY RESPONDENT; COSTS IN THE COURT OF SPECIAL APPEALS TO ABIDE THE RESULT.

Dissenting Opinion by RAKER, J. joined by BELL, C.J., and ELDRIDGE, J.

1 . Throughout the opinion, we shall use the words "trash” and "garbage” interchangeably.

2 . The State notes in its brief that the issue of whether the trash bags were, in fact, left within the curtilage of the home was not litigated at the suppression hearing, and it suggests that "it is not at all clear” that such was the case. We shall assume, for purposes of this case, that the bags were left within the curtilage. The record contains pictures of the front lawn, showing the location of the tree and its close proximity to both the house and the sidewalk. In United States v. Dunn, 480 U.S. 294, 300, 107 S.Ct. 1134, 1139, 94 L.Ed.2d 326, 334 (1987), the Court noted that the curtilage concept originated at common law to afford the immediate area surrounding a dwelling house the same protection as the burglary law afforded the house itself, but that the concept also has Fourth Amendment significance. In Oliver v. United States, 466 U.S. 170, 104 S.Ct. 1735, 80 L.Ed.2d 214 (1984), the Court held that the extent of the curtilage, for Fourth Amendment purposes, was to be determined “by reference to the factors that determine whether an individual reasonably may expect that an area immediately adjacent to the home will remain private,” id. at 180, 104 S.Ct. at 1742, 80 L.Ed.2d at 225, and in Dunn, it held that curtilage questions "should be resolved with particular reference to four factors: the proximity of the area claimed to be curtilage to the home, whether the area is included within an enclosure surrounding the home, the nature of the uses to which the area is put, and the steps taken by the resident to protect the area from observation by people passing by.” Dunn, supra, 480 U.S. at 301, 107 S.Ct. at 1139, 94 L.Ed.2d at 334-35. The Court also made clear, however, that those factors could not be combined in mechanical fashion to produce a finely-tuned "correct” answer to all Fourth Amendment curtilage questions, but simply were "useful analytical tools” bearing "upon the centrally relevant consideration — whether the area in question is so intimately tied to the home itself that it should be placed under the home’s 'umbrella' of Fourth Amendment protection.” Id. See also Everhart v. State, 274 Md. 459, 485-86, 337 A.2d 100, 115 (1975), decided prior to Oliver and Dunn. In the Dunn case itself, the Court held that a barn on a 198-acre ranch, located inside a perimeter fence but 50 yards outside the fence surrounding the ranch house, was not within the curtilage of the house. That is, of course, a far ciy from the situation now before us — a shallow lawn in front of the house, upon which petitioner's children regularly played.

3 . The California courts concluded that the trash searches also violated the California Constitution but noted that, under California law, evidence seized in violation of the State Constitution was not rendered inadmissible unless it was also in violation of the Federal Constitution. The issue at the Supreme Court level, centering on the usability of the evidence taken from the trash bags to establish probable cause for the warrant, thus hinged solely on Fourth Amendment jurisprudence.

4 . In some of the cases involving direct seizure by the police, it is not at all clear whether the trash containers were placed within or without the curtilage. In United States v. Dela Espriella, 781 F.2d 1432 (9th Cir. 1986), Federal agents searched trash containers "placed for curbside collection outside Rondero's home.” Id. at 1437. Without ever noting whether that placement was within or without the curtilage of the home, the court simply concluded that "placing garbage for collection constitutes abandonment of the property” and that "[warrantless searches of abandoned property do not violate the fourth amendment.” Id. In United States v. Kramer, 711 F.2d 789 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 464 U.S. 962, 104 S.Ct. 397, 78 L.Ed.2d 339 (1983), police officers retrieved trash bags the defendant "had put by the roadside in front of his house to be collected by a private garbage removal service.” Id. at 792. Although there was some dispute as to whether the bags were actually on the defendant’s property, the court, in resolving the Fourth Amendment claim, assumed that the bags were taken from an area inside the defendant's perimeter fence. Id. Notwithstanding that the act of reaching over the fence and a few feet of the property to retrieve the bags thus constituted a technical trespass, the court found no Fourth Amendment violation. The protection afforded to people by that Amendment, the court held, "does not extend to their discarded garbage." Id. In United States v. Vahalik, 606 F.2d 99 (5th Cir. 1979), cert. denied, 444 U.S. 1081, 100 S.Ct. 1034, 62 L.Ed.2d 765 (1980), the trash, seized directly by the police, had been placed "at the edge of the street for collection.” Id. at 100. The court did not indicate whether that location was on the defendant’s properly but simply held that "the act of placing garbage for collection is an act of abandonment which terminates any fourth amendment protection.” Id. at 101. See also Commonwealth v. Minton, 288 Pa.Super. 381, 432 A.2d 212, 215 (1981) (trash bag placed "at the curb side directly in front of the SCARLATA residence”); State v. Schultz, 388 So.2d 1326, 1327 (Fla.Dist.Ct.App. 1980) (trash bag seized from "swale area in front of the residence”). In Cooks v. State, 699 P.2d 653, 656 (Okla.Crim.App.), cert. denied, 474 U.S. 935, 106 S.Ct. 268, 88 L.Ed.2d 275 (1985), the challenged evidence — a bloody sock — was taken by a police officer from a garbage can "in the appellant’s front yard.” In State v. Oquist, 327 N.W.2d 587, 589 (Minn.1982), the trash bags were taken by police officers "near the public alley immediately behind the defendant's house.” In United States v. Michaels, 726 F.2d 1307, 1312 (8th Cir.1984), the court declared the rule emanating from the various decisions to be that there is no expectation of privacy in trash placed for collection "in a public area, in close proximity to a public way, or in an outdoors communal trash container serving an apartment building.”

Even where the trash bags had been placed in a location outside the curtilage, the decision did not appear to rest on that fact. Most of the courts, as in United States v. Shelby, 573 F.2d 971 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 439 U.S. 841, 99 S.Ct. 132, 58 L.Ed.2d 139 (1978), simply adopted the notion that "[t]he placing of trash in the garbage cans at the time and place for anticipated collection by public employees for hauling to a public dump signifies abandonment,” which terminates any expectation of privacy. Id. at 973. See also Commonwealth v. Chappee, 397 Mass. 508, 492 N.E.2d 719, 722 (1986) (fact that trash bags are placed on public property is a significant factor to be considered in determining whether defendant had a reasonable expectation of privacy but is not controlling). Some seemed to conclude that such an abandonment effectively terminates any subjective expectation of privacy. See, e.g., United States v. Reicherter, 647 F.2d 397, 399 (3d Cir. 1981) (having placed trash in an area particularly suited for public inspection for express purpose of having strangers take it, "it is inconceivable that the defendant intended to retain a privacy interest in the discarded objects”); United States v. Terry, 702 F.2d 299 (2d Cir.) (once trash is discarded, former owner rarely has any further interest in it other than to be assured that it will not remain at his doorstep; mere use of opaque containers does not indicate an intent to retain a privacy interest), cert. denied, 461 U.S. 931, 103 S.Ct. 2095, 77 L.Ed.2d 304 (1983). Other courts, without regard to any subjective expectation, held that any such expectation is just not reasonable. See United States v. Crowell, 586 F.2d 1020, 1025 (4th Cir.1978), cert. denied, 440 U.S. 959, 99 S.Ct. 1500, 59 L.Ed.2d 772 (1979).

5 . See State v. Boland, 115 Wash.2d 571, 800 P.2d 1112 (1990); State v. Hempele, 120 N.J. 182, 576 A.2d 793 (1990); State v. Tanaka, 67 Haw. 658, 701 P.2d 1274 (1985). Most courts faced with such an invitation, however, have rejected it. See State v. DeFusco, 224 Conn. 627, 620 A.2d 746 (1993); People v. Hillman, 834 P.2d 1271 (Colo.1992); Moran v. State, 644 N.E.2d 536 (Ind.1994); State v. Rydberg, 519 N.W.2d 306 (N.D.1994); State v. Carriere, 545 N.W.2d 773 (N.D.1996).