JUDGES SET TO DETERMINE WHETHER TRASH IS PRIVATE

Nothing was stirring but the raccoons on Dec. 17, 2003, when Calgary
police swooped down in a predawn raid to snatch Russell Patrick's garbage.

Reaching over Mr. Russell's property line, officers made off with
several bags of refuse, eliciting enough evidence of a potential
drug-manufacturing operation to obtain a search warrant on his house.

Shortly afterward, Mr. Patrick was charged with producing and
trafficking the methamphetamine MDA, launching a classic battle over
the constitutional right to privacy.

At a Supreme Court of Canada hearing tomorrow, the judges will be
asked to overturn Mr. Patrick's conviction and exclude the evidence
on the grounds that seizing a citizen's garbage is the mark of a police state.

"The policy implications of the Crown's position are profound,"
lawyers Jonathan Lisus and Alexi Wood said in a Canadian Civil
Liberties Association brief. "The state would be free to harvest
waste in 'bad neighbourhoods' to build a database of information it
would never otherwise be able to gather.

In a brief to the Court on behalf of Mr. Patrick, lawyer Jennifer
Ruttan said that, while a hand reaching over a fence may seen like a
minor intrusion, it can easily lead directly to a search warrant
being issued for a dwelling.