WV: Def left jacket at friend’s house where he occasionally spent the night; no REP at the time of seizure

Defendant was an occasional overnight guest in the home of a friend. He left a jacket there in a common area, and the police seized it by the consent of the homeowner. Defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the jacket at the time it was found and seized. State v. Payne, 2016 W. Va. LEXIS 760 (Oct. 19, 2016):

Construing the facts of the case at bar in the light most favorable to the State, we find the petitioner failed in his burden of proving that he had a reasonable expectation of privacy in his jacket and, thus, lacks standing to challenge the search. The suppression hearing evidence demonstrated that Starks bailed the petitioner out of jail at the end of December of 2009, after which the petitioner “just kind of hung out” with the Starks family “a little bit,” sometimes staying at Starks’ house, or he might “stay with somebody else[,]” “crashing” at Starks’ home “when he needed to.” The evidence also showed that the petitioner arrived at Starks’ home during the early morning hours of January 13, 2010, shortly after the murder. When Starks awoke later that same morning, the petitioner was gone, having relinquished possession of his jacket by leaving it in the foyer of the home, a common area. The petitioner gave Starks no indication as to whether he would ever return to Starks’ home, and he left no instructions with regard to his jacket.

In short, the petitioner could not reasonably have expected that no one would ever touch or handle his jacket that he had abandoned on a chair in the foyer of Starks’ home, whether it be Starks, or his wife or children, or people Starks invites into his home, such as Detective Wygal and Officer Fazzini. Other courts are in agreement that persons by their acts and deeds can lose any expectation of privacy in personal items. See Brown v. United States, 97 A.3d 92, 96 (D.C. 2014) (citing United States v. Boswell, 347 A.2d 270, 274 (D.C. 1975) (“‘The issue is not abandonment in the strict property-right sense but whether the person prejudiced by the search had voluntarily discarded, left behind, or otherwise relinquished his interest in the property in question.'”); Hill v. United States, 664 A.2d 347 (D.C. 1995) (finding defendants did not have legitimate expectation of privacy in apartment where they “sometimes” stayed, where they had stayed previous night, and were good friends with tenant); State v. Corbin, 194 Ohio App. 3d 720, 2011 Ohio 3491, 957 N.E.2d 849 (Ohio Ct. App. 2011) (finding defendant had no expectation of privacy in contents of bag he had abandoned in plain view at home of third-party who consented to search of home where defendant was occasional overnight guest); State v. Francisco, 107 Wn. App. 247, 26 P.3d 1008, 1012 (Wash. Ct. App. 2001) (upholding search and seizure of gun at mother’s home and observing that “[defendant’s] intermittent use of his mother’s house as a place to stay overnight, do laundry, and store clothes does not suggest that he had authority to exclude anyone from the premises or that he could legitimately expect that items he left there would remain undisturbed.”).