SAN DIEGO DISTRICT ATTORNEY The Fourth Amendment and ...

With Defendant’s Admission as to the Contents:
When a suspect makes “an unequivocal, contemporaneous, and
voluntary disclosure (to a law enforcement officer) that a package
or container contains contraband,” he waives any reasonable
expectation of privacy as to the contents of that container,
eliminating the need to obtain a search warrant. (United States v.
Monghur (9 th Cir. 2009) 588 F.3 rd 975, 978-981; citing United
States v. Cardona Rivera (7 th Cir. 1990) 904 F.2 nd 1149.)
A jail inmate talking over a jail telephone, where he is
warned that his conversations were subject to monitoring,
asking a friend to retrieve what officers understood to be a
gun (although defendant only referred to it as “the thing”)
from a container (also described in vague, generic terms) in
the closet of his girlfriend’s home, does not waive any
expectation of privacy defendant had in the container that
was later retrieved by law enforcement and illegally
searched without a search warrant. (United States v.
Monghur, supra.)
Abandoned Property: Any containers (or any other property) abandoned
by a suspect, thus relinquishing at least an objectively reasonable
expectation of privacy, if not also the subject’s subjective expectation of
privacy, may be seized and searched without probable cause and without a
search warrant. (In re Baraka H. (1992) 6 Cal.App.4 th 1039.)
E.g.: A minor, who appeared to officers to be conducting narcotics
transactions with passing motorists, retrieved controlled substances
from a paper bag discarded on the ground some distance beyond
the minor’s reach. When detained, the bag was retrieved by the
officers and searched and marijuana was recovered. By distancing
himself from the bag, the minor gave up any reasonable
expectation of privacy in the bag’s contents. (In re Baraka H.,
supra.)
Observations of defendant retrieving contraband from a hole in the
ground, covered by a piece of wood, in the common area of an
apartment complex, while the observing officers are standing on
adjacent private property with the permission of the property’s
owner, were lawful, as was the warrantless retrieval of the
contraband found in the hole. (People v. Shaw (2002) 97
Cal.App.4 th 833.)
© 2012 Robert C. Phillips. All rights reserved
There is no expectation of privacy in a duffle bag left in an
apartment laundry room open to anyone, even though placed out of
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