Cheetum Case Summary

DISCUSSION
Cheetum will probably be able to win his claim that his Fourth Amendment rights were violated and thus his suppression motion should be granted. The Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution states:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. U.S. Const. amend. IV
The Fourth Amendment is intended to protect the security a man relies upon when he places himself or his property within a constitutionally protected area, be it his home or his office,
his hotel room or his automobile. Hoffa v. United States, 385 U.S. 293, 301 ((1966) (Warren, J., dissenting). These Fourth Amendment restraints were expanded to include searches and seizures by government employers or supervisors of the private property of their employees. O’Conner v. Ortega, 480 U.S. 709 (1987) (Plurality opinion) (Scalia, J., concurring).
In order to determine if a claim against the governments intrusion is reasonable the defendant must show that he had a subjective expectation of privacy in the area searched and an objective expectation, which is one in which society is prepared to recognize as reasonable. U.S. v. Anderson, 154 F.3d 1225, 1229 (10th Cir. 1998). Because Cheetum genuinely believed that his credenza was his personal property and that no one would look in it without his permission, his subjective expectation of privacy is not up for dispute by either party.
The Tenth Circuit has created a three prong test in order to determine whether one has an objectively reasonable expectation of privacy or not.
These factors are: (1) the employee's relationship to the item seized; (2) whether the item was in the immediate control of the employee when it was seized; and (3) whether the employee took actions to maintain privacy over the item. U.S. v. Anderson, 154 F.3d 1225.
Each of these issues will be discussed below.
a) Cheetum will probably be able to show that he had a personal relationship to the file seized from his credenza.
A court is more apt to find an employee has standing to challenge the seizure of personal items or the search of an area where personal items are stored than the search or seizure of work-related documents or materials; this is true for employees who bring personal possession into the workplace as well. U.S. v. Anderson, 154 F.3d 1231. Cheetum choose to bring his credenza from home into the workplace in order to use it for work and personal related
items.
The Supreme Court has noted that just because something passes through the confines of the business address this does not mean that it can be considered part of the workplace and therefore within the employer’s control. O’Conner v. Ortega, 480 U.S. 716 (Plurality opinion) (Scalia, J., concurring). Cheetums decision to bring this credenza in to the workplace does not automatically make it considered workplace property and consequently subject to workplace searches. Under this rationale, both his credenza and hiss personal file within it remain his personal property because the government did not explicitly reserve ownership over the piece of furniture nor its contents. U.S. v. Angevine, 281 F.3d 1130 (10th Cir. 2002).
However, the government may try and make the argument that his mere ownership of the property is not enough to establish a sufficient personal relationship. By voluntarily transferring his property from purely private use to public use in his workplace some would say that this is him giving up his private personal relationship with the item. U.S. v. Barrows, 481 F.3d 1246, 1248 (10th Cir. 2007). This argument is a bit weaker though because Cheetum had a private office where he had somewhat of an expectation of privacy.
b) Cheetum will probably not be able to make the argument that he had immediate control over his file when it was seized.
An employee has a greater expectation of privacy in items that are within their immediate control.
U.S. v. Anderson, 154 F.3d 1232. In the case of Anderson, the defendant made sure to never let his tapes containing what he believed to be child pornography out of his possession. By keeping his on him at all times he was able to exercise more control over the items and maintain a greater expectation of privacy for these items. Cheetum does not satisfy this criteria because of the mere fact that he choose to leave his file containing personal incriminating evidence outside of his immediate control. He choose to leave it unattended in his office while he went out for
dinner.
Nonetheless, his amount of control does exceed that of a previous case in which the court found that an employee bringing a personal computer from home to the workplace for work related matters, leaving it unattended, and running at all hours of the day resulted in an evaporation of a reasonable expectation of privacy U.S. v. Barrows, 481 F.3d 1246. Cheetum at least made the effort to conceal his incriminating documents in a private folder, in his personal property, in his locked office.
So, although Cheetum may not have had as much control over the contents of his file as Anderson did his tapes, he was still not as reckless as the defendant in Barrows with his computer. The Anderson tests will not be satisfied per se, but he may be able to try and claim that there was still some sort of control over the items seized by his boss.