COURT WEIGHS RIGHT TO SEARCH TRASH Woman Claims Police Violated Her Fourth Amendment Right After Going Through Her Trash BALTIMORE (AP) The State Court of Appeals is considering whether police have the right to search garbage without a warrant. A Cambridge woman claims police violated her Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure when they found cocaine residue in her household trash and used that evidence to obtain a search warrant. In oral arguments Friday, Stephen Z. Meehan, attorney for Donna L. Sampson, said police seized Sampson's garbage from private property without the consent of a trash collector. That means that police were not operating under the umbrella of a 1988 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that gives police the right to seize trash. The Supreme Court concluded that anyone who puts trash on a public curb forfeits a privacy claim to it, and that police seizure of it from a trash collector does not constitute an unreasonable search. Sampson's attorneys wrote that the area around her house is a zone of privacy, meaning that police would need a warrant to enter the area. Gary E. Bair, chief of criminal appeals for the Maryland attorney general's office, countered that if trash is set out for the purpose of being collected, the owner has forfeited ownership, no matter the precise location of the garbage. The Court of Appeals judges asked Friday how far police officers should tread onto private property to retrieve garbage, questioning if trash in cans by the side of a house would be considered accessible to the public. Cambridge police seized Sampson's garbage on six occasions in October and November 1997. Sampson was convicted of possession of crack cocaine and sentenced to eight years in prison. She appealed, and a three-judge panel of the Court of Special Appeals threw out the conviction, saying search and seizure of Sampson's trash violated the Fourth Amendment.
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