In U.S. v. Segura-Baltazar, No. 05-12705 (May 12, 2006), the Court upheld the legality of the search of the defendant’s trash outside his home, upheld the legality of a "no-knock" search, and affirmed the imposition of a mandatory sentence based in part on the weight of the carrier in which methaphantamine
The police, with the aid of the local trash collector over a period of several months, obtained the garbage bags which were left for collection outside the home of a suspected drug trafficker. Some of the bags were left on the curb, some were left closer to the house, at a place where they were habitually picked up for disposal by the trash collector. In the garbage, the police found two different magazines for semiautomatic handguns, an empty box of 12-gauge shotgun shells, one live round of .45 caliber ammunition, and empty boxes that likely once contained surveillance cameras and monitors that have the ability to see in low-light conditions.
Citing California v. Greenwood, 486 U.S. 35 (1989), the Court held that the defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy in trash bags left outside his home. While the bags left by the house, no on the curb, presented a "closer" question, the Court noted that bags left in this spot were habitually picked up by the trash collector, diminishing the privacy expectation.
The Court also found no Fourth Amendment in the "no knock" entry into the home. Though noting the law in another circuit that the presence of guns in a home does not standing alone justify a "no knock" entry, here the presence of guns and surveillance cameras easily provided the reasonable suspicion necessary to support a "no knock" entry.
Finally, as to sentencing, the Court rejected the argument that the weight of the "cutting agent" for methamphetamine should not have been counted in determining the weight of drugs that was used as the basis for imposing a ten-year mandatory sentence. Citing Chapman v. U.S., 500 U.S. 453, the Court noted that Congress based sentences on the "mixture" of a substance containing a detectable amount of drugs. This indicated that the cutting agent should be included. The Court distinguished U.S. v. Jackson, 115 F.3d 843 (11th Cir. 1997), because the sugar that was not counted as cocaine in that case was more like a container than a carrier.
