D.S.D.: Entry to backyard to get trash violated curtilage; trash is a collection of information until it is abandoned

The trash receptacle here was by the back door and window, and entry to the backyard to retrieve the trash was an entry onto the protected curtilage. Until the trash is put out for collection, the container is a receptacle of information, not unlike a cell phone. United States v. Johnson, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 81539 (D.S.D. April 10, 2015):

Even if a subsequent reviewing court should find that the trespass model from Jardines and Jones is inapplicable and that the Katz reasonable-expectation test should apply, this court reaches the same conclusion. First, this court notes that trash, like digital data on a cell phone, consists of a collection all in one place of many disparate kinds of information-“an address, a note, a prescription, a bank statement, a video”-and that collection of data reveals much more about a person in combination “than any isolated record.” Riley, 134 S. Ct. at 2489. Thus, although the Supreme Court dismisses any subjective expectation of privacy in trash as “unreasonable,” there are heightened privacy concerns in trash and courts should be cautious in reaching the conclusion that a defendant has definitively relinquished possession of such privacy-laden caches.