HI: Calling police to garage showed no REP there; plain view sustained

Police summoned to defendant’s house by his 911 call did not intrude on defendant’s subjective or actual reasonable expectation of privacy. A plain view of a hammer as a weapon was thus valid. State v. Phillips, 2016 Haw. LEXIS 234 (Sept. 30, 2016):

Phillips did not exhibit an actual (subjective) expectation of privacy regarding the presence of police in his garage for the following reasons: Phillips requested the 911 operator to send the police to his home because Tara had been assaulted; when the police arrived, the garage door was open and the interior of the garage was exposed to public view; Phillips invited the police officers to enter the garage; and the totality of his conduct while the police were present.

b. Objective expectation of privacy

Even if Phillips had exhibited an actual expectation of privacy, it “must be one that society would recognize as objectively reasonable” in order for the constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures to attach. …

In addition, Phillips’ actions demonstrate that he did not take precautions to insure his privacy in the garage. See State v. Holbron, 65 Haw. 152, 154, 648 P.2d 194, 196 (1982) (stating that the determination of whether a defendant has a reasonable expectation of privacy in a particular place depends, in part, on the precautions he or she takes to insure the preservation of his or her privacy). Indeed, Phillips allowed the garage to become the center of activity for the initial investigation, including the location of Phillips’ demonstration of how the purported assailant gained access to the home through the malfunctioning garage door. By knowingly and voluntarily exposing the interior of his garage to the police, cf. State v. Dias, 62 Haw. 52, 56, 609 P.2d 637, 640 (1980) (“Conduct open to view and conversations audible to persons standing outside of a building constitute activities knowingly exposed to the public.”), and by readily allowing the area to be used by the emergency responders, any expectation of privacy in the exposed, visible interior of the garage was not “one that society would recognize as objectively reasonable.” …

Therefore, with neither a subjective expectation of privacy, nor one that society would recognize as objectively reasonable, the police officers that Phillips summoned into his garage did not intrude upon Phillips’ reasonable expectation of privacy by entering the garage. Having found that the police did “not invade an individual’s legitimate expectation of privacy, ‘there is no “search” subject to the Warrant Clause.'” State v. Meyer, 78 Hawai’i 308, 312, 893 P.2d 159, 163 (1995) (quoting Illinois v. Andreas, 463 U.S. 765, 771, 103 S. Ct. 3319, 77 L. Ed. 2d 1003 (1983)).