A Montana Supreme Court justice says it's within the law for police to sift through your garbage for incriminating stuff, even without a warrant or court approval.
The Supreme Court of Montana ruled last month that police could conduct a warrantless "trash dive" into the trash cans in the alley behind the home of a man named Darrell Pelvit. The cops discovered pseudoephedrine boxes — a solvent with uses including the manufacture of methamphetamine — and Pelvit eventually ended up in prison.
Pelvit's attorney argued that his client had a reasonable expectation of privacy in his trash, but the court rejected the argument and said the trash was, well, meant to be thrown away.
What's remarkable is the concurring opinion of Montana Supreme Court Justice James C. Nelson, who reluctantly went along with his colleagues but warned that George Orwell's 1984 had arrived. We reproduce his concurring opinion in full…
Link, via Declan McCullagh's politech list: post one, post two.
Reader comment: semirrahge disagrees with technical details cited:
The original article stated: "The cops discovered evidence of pseudoephedrine and Naptha — a solvent with uses including the manufacture of methamphetamine — and Pelvit eventually ended up in prison." When you [quoted] Declan McCullagh's paraphrase [of] the article, the Naptha was left out and what remained was a completely incorrect statement.
The original article is horribly constructed, so this is understandable. I just thought I'd point the error out for your edification. Naptha is an aromatic hydrocarbon distilled from petroleum. It is a medium-grade solvent, and is also used in wick-type lighters like the world-famous Zippo Pseudoephedrine (pseudoephedrine hydrochloride) the chemical name of Sudafed, which is an OTC nasal decongestant. The drug is closely related to the amphetamine branch of chemicals, and in many cases has excitatory effects similar to those drugs.
Naptha is used ON pseudoephedrine to break it down in preparation for cooking. Pseudoephedrine is not the solvent.
