State Justices Apply Privacy Rule to Searches

SAN FRANCISCO —  A person has a reasonable expectation of privacy in his home, even while bagging cocaine in front of an open side-yard window, the California Supreme Court decided Thursday.

In a 4-3 ruling, the court said police violated a drug defendant’s rights by walking into an open side yard late at night and observing the resident through his bedroom window as he placed white powder in bags. The 4th Amendment to the Constitution forbids unreasonable searches by police.

The court majority contended that the ruling will discourage police from “engaging in warrantless nighttime intrusions into the yards of citizens.”

Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar, writing for the majority, said it was reasonable for the defendant in the case, Cayetano Camacho, to expect that no one would trespass on his property late at night and look into his bedroom window, which could not be seen from the street.

“The line we draw today lets an unquestionably guilty man go free,” Werdegar wrote. But, she continued, quoting U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter, “constitutional lines are the price of constitutional government.”

The three justices who dissented complained that the court was imposing a “narrow and rigid restraint on police” in California.

The ruling “sets a bright-line rule” that if police do not have a warrant, they must stay in locations where the public is implicitly invited except in an emergency, said Deputy Atty. Gen. Gary Lieberman.

The state is considering appealing the decision, People vs. Camacho, S075720, to the U.S. Supreme Court, Lieberman added.

The ruling came in an Oxnard case in which police testified that they received an anonymous complaint about a loud party and went to the address at 11 p.m. to investigate.

The officers heard no noise. But instead of knocking on the front door, they walked across the grass into a side yard to look into a bedroom window of the single-story home.

There they saw Camacho, sitting with his back to the window, handling clear plastic bags. On a bed and dresser were several bags containing white powder.

The two officers called for a backup, entered Camacho’s bedroom window and arrested him.

“There was never any dispute as far as the good faith of the police,” Lieberman said. “They got a complaint about a loud music disturbance, and the window they looked through was where the defendant’s stereo speakers were facing.”

The decision will overturn the conviction of Camacho, who had pleaded guilty to possession of drugs for sale after a trial court refused to suppress the evidence against him. He has been on probation, pending his appeal.

In evaluating the officers’ conduct during the June 1997 search, the court based its decision on the lateness of the hour, the relative lack of seriousness of the phoned-in complaint and the officers’ failure to first knock on the defendant’s door.

Ventura County Judge Bruce A. Clark heard the case and ruled at the trial that the police had acted legally because the window had no blinds and anyone outside could easily peer in.

But the Supreme Court disagreed, saying that the absence of blinds did not mean a person could not reasonably expect privacy.

“Most persons, we believe, would be surprised, indeed startled, to look out their bedroom window at such an hour to find police officers standing in their yard looking back at them,” wrote Werdegar, who was joined by Justices Stanley Mosk, Joyce Kennard and Janice Rogers Brown.

Chief Justice Ronald M. George, writing the dissent, said Camacho’s failure to “take even minimal measures” to shield the window with blinds, curtains or some other cover meant that he could not truly expect to be private.

To make his point, George attached color photographs of Camacho’s modest home. They show that the side yard was easily accessible from the street, and, in George’s view, “a location where other persons reasonably may be anticipated to be present.”

“The brief time spent by officers in the open side yard of the residence, not for the purpose of surveillance but simply to attempt to identify the location of the noise that had prompted the complaint to the police, was not unreasonable under the circumstances,” George wrote. Justices Marvin Baxter and Ming W. Chin joined him.