In N.H., Your Trash Is Private

The New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled Monday that garbage is private, even when it has been put out near the street for collection.

The 4-1 decision runs counter to rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court and high courts in most other states. But the court said New Hampshire's constitution provides a stronger expectation of privacy than the U.S. Constitution.

The decision came in a case in which police searched a man's trash and found wire scrapers coated with marijuana residue.

Based on that and the observation that John Goss appeared to have a light for growing plants, police got a warrant to search his home, where they seized marijuana and three pipes.

Goss appealed, saying it was illegal for police to search his garbage without a warrant.

The high court agreed and ordered a lower court judge to decide whether the search warrant for Goss' home could have been obtained without the illegal evidence.

"Personal letters, bills, receipts, prescription bottles and similar items that are regularly disposed of in household trash disclose information about the resident that few people would want to be made public," Justice Joseph Nadeau said.

"Nor do we believe that people voluntarily expose such information to the public when they leave trash, in sealed bags, out for regular collection."

Justice John Broderick dissented, citing a 1988 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that it was unreasonable for people to expect their trash to remain private, given 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."

That ruling was made in a California case remarkably similar to the New Hampshire case. In California, police investigating narcotics trafficking searched trash bags outside a suspect's house - without a warrant - and used the evidence they found to get a warrant to search the house, at which point more evidence was found and the suspect was arrested.

He unsuccessfully challenged the arrest on the grounds that there was no search warrant for the trash.

If the issue were to resurface at the U.S. Supreme Court, it would face four justices still on the court who were a part of the 1988 majority ruling on no privacy protection for trash at the curb.

They are: Chief Justice William Rehnquist, and Justices John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, and Antonin Scalia.