When you throw away your trash, it’s not private anymore. Police can search through it without needing a warrant. They often use what they find to get a warrant to search your home. But sometimes they rush and don’t have enough evidence. This article explains the legal rules around this. When you put your trash out for collection, you’re giving up your right to privacy. This means that the police can search through your trash without a warrant. The court decides if the trash was easily accessible to the public, and if it was, then there’s no expectation of privacy. This applies even if the trash is in your yard. So, if your garbage is easy for anyone to get to, it can be searched by the police. Probable cause means there’s a good reason to believe someone is guilty of a crime and evidence of the crime is likely at a certain place. When deciding if there’s probable cause for a search warrant, judges use common sense and review the information in the warrant application. They give a lot of respect to the judge’s decision. Just finding a small amount of drugs in someone’s trash isn’t enough to justify searching their home, unless there’s other evidence of drug dealing. For example, finding a large amount of drugs in the trash could lead to a legal search warrant. But if it’s just a small amount for personal use, it’s not enough. Several cases have shown that a single trash pull alone is usually not enough to justify searching someone’s home, unless there’s other evidence of ongoing drug activity. If the police want to search someone’s house for drugs, they might start by going through their trash to find evidence. But they can’t just go straight to a judge for a search warrant based on that. They need more evidence, like watching the person’s house and seeing people coming and going at all hours, or hearing from neighbors about suspicious activity. Only then can they ask a judge for permission to search the person’s home. And sometimes, they already have that evidence before they even go through the person’s trash. For example, in one case, the police had been watching a person’s house for a month and saw a lot of people coming and going, then they saw people smoking what looked like marijuana and others leaving with bags that looked like they had cocaine in them. Only after all of that did they go through the person’s trash and find drugs. If the police find evidence of someone using or dealing drugs in the past, and then find drugs in their trash, they can use this as a reason to get a search warrant for the person’s home. However, if the evidence is too old or not strong enough, the warrant may not be valid. There’s a rule that says if the police rely on a warrant in good faith, even if it’s later found to be invalid, the evidence can still be used. But in some cases, if the warrant is really not based on good evidence, this rule doesn’t apply. Some cases have shown that a single instance of finding drugs in the trash and a vague tip about drug activity is not enough to justify searching someone’s home. This has led to police departments training their officers better to make sure they have good reasons before searching someone’s home. So, if a lawyer looks closely at the warrant, they might find a way to help their client and make sure the police do their job well.
Source: https://www.floridabar.org/the-florida-bar-journal/the-state-of-our-trash-in-florida-the-use-of-evidence-found-in-residential-garbage-to-establish-probable-cause-to-search-a-citizens-home/
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