HIGH COURT TO CONSIDER IF POLICE CAN SEIZE TRASH

Household Waste Led To The Arrest Of Calgary Drug Dealer

OTTAWA - The Supreme Court of Canada is about to tackle
trash.

One of the most significant cases of the fall session, which begins
this week, will be heard on Friday when the bench considers whether
police should be permitted to continue their longtime practice of
rummaging through garbage set outside for municipal collection.

Lawyers for Calgary drug dealer Russell Patrick will argue that coffee
grounds, bill remnants, bank statements, empty pill bottles, dinner
scraps and other discarded refuse is private information that should
be constitutionally shielded from the eyes of the state.

"Household waste may disclose a variety of personal information
including one's lifestyle choices, DNA, finances, health and
identification," lawyer Jennifer Ruttan says in a court brief.

Patrick is challenging the power of Calgary police to seize four bags
of trash from his property, gleaning enough evidence of drug
manufacturing to obtain a warrant to search his home and subsequently
charged him with possessing and trafficking ecstasy.

A former national swimming star who set a national and a world record,
Patrick was sentenced to four years in prison in 2006. He wants the
Supreme Court to overturn his conviction on grounds that
constitutionally protected sanctity of one's dwelling includes the
trash stored in bins outside and that police violated his Charter
right against unreasonable search and seizure.

The Crown contends Patrick gave up his privacy rights when he
abandoned his unwanted garbage, an argument that succeeded in the
Alberta Court of Appeal.

"The Charter has not transformed the act of putting out the trash into
a privileged and confidential communication between householder and
garbage collector," lawyers Ron Reimer and Jolaine Antonio say in a
written court submission. "To exclude evidence in this case would
bring disrepute to the administration of justice by letting a plainly
guilty drug manufacturer go unpunished."

The Crown asserts that combing garbage for clues is tantamount to
"old-fashioned police footwork."

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association, one of several intervenors
in the case, rejects the argument that picking through refuse is fair
game because it has been abandoned, noting in a written court
submission that city bylaws nationwide prohibit "scavenging" garbage.

Moreover, association lawyers Jonathan Lisus and Alexi Wood warn that
allowing police to persist with the practice makes them "free to
harvest waste in 'bad neighbourhoods' to build databases of
information."

But the Crown counters garbage combing "is an unpleasant,
time-consuming manual process to which police resources will only be
devoted in the course of focused criminal investigations."