ComputerForensicsDigest.com

Brief Summary: Defendant was convicted of burglary and grand theft of, among other things, a laptop computer. He appealed the denial of his motion to suppress the results of a search of the laptop, during which police determined that it did not belong to him.

Facts: Larry Hicks was stopped by police while driving without headlights or visible license tag in a residential neighborhood which was at the time under surveillance due to burglaries. Hicks consented to a search, during which officers found a variety of items, including mail with other people's addresses on it. Among the items found was a briefcase containing a laptop computer. Hicks told the initial group of officers that he had received the laptop from an uncle in Orlando.

Additional officers arrived on the scene and one, a Deputy Ogg, saw the laptop sitting on the trunk of Hicks's car. Under the belief that Hicks had given consent to a search of the vehicle and its contents, Ogg turned on the computer and began browsing the files to determine the name of the owner (which was not Hicks).

Hicks was charged with a variety of crimes, including burglary and grand larceny. He moved to suppress the results of the search of the laptop on the grounds that Ogg's examination of the computer files exceeded the scope of the permission Hicks gave to search the vehicle. The State argued that Hicks did not have an expectation of privacy in the stolen laptop and that officers had probable causes to conduct a warrantless search. The trial court concluded that the police had probable cause to conduct the search based on the reasonable belief that Hicks was loitering and prowling. Hicks appealed on the grounds that the search violated his reasonable expectation of privacy.

Issue(s): Whether the trial court erred in denying Hicks's motion to suppress the results of the search of the laptop.

Ruling: No, the trial court did not err in denying the motion, although the Court of Appeals based its decision on Hicks's lack of a reasonable privacy interest and did not reach the trial court's probable cause analysis.

Rationale: Under the Fourth Amendment, the burden is on a defendant to establish "that he or she had an actual, subjective expectation of privacy in the property searched and (2) a defendant establishes that society would recognize that subjective expectation as objectively reasonable." Minnesota v. Olson, 495 U.S. 91, 95 (1990).

The Court of Appeals reviewed a number of cases from around the U.S. that hold that a defendant does not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in stolen property. Moreover, in this particular case, Hicks failed to do anything to buttress his claim of privacy, either in terms of proving ownership or use of the laptop.

Given its ruling on the privacy issue, the Court of Appeals declared that there was no need to reach the issue of whether the police had probable cause to search the laptop.