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News-Register.com Oregon If you want to protect your privacy in Oregon, it's best not to dump any clues in the garbage — especially if you're suspected of running a methamphetamine lab. The Oregon Supreme Court ruled Thursday that police are welcome to sift through the garbage after it has been collected to hunt for evidence against suspects in an investigation. In a brief opinion by Justice Rives Kistler, the court said garbage carries no right to privacy under the Oregon Constitution because it is essentially abandoned property. Police had looked through garbage to find evidence that Sharon Howard and Gary Dawson were manufacturing methamphetamine at Howard's residence in Sweet Home. Dawson and Howard appealed their drug convictions by challenging the search, claiming the Oregon Constitution protected their garbage under Article I, Section 9, which says: "No law shall violate the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses papers and effects, against unreasonable search, or seizure." But the court said garbage is garbage, and once it's dumped, whoever put it out for a sanitation company to collect gave up all ownership and privacy rights. "As this court consistently has recognized, a person retains no constitutionally protected privacy interest in abandoned property," Kistler wrote. The court also noted that Dawson and Howard based their argument solely on the Oregon Constitution because the U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled that the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does not prohibit the police from searching garbage after it has been collected. Kistler suggested the law on garbage dates to at least 1871 and a Connecticut case involving horse manure. He said the 19th century ruling implied that if anybody has an ownership claim to garbage after it's collected, it's the garbage man.
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