MOO- I've no doubt LE obtained his DNA before the December 14-17th car ride to PA. In 1988 the US Supreme Court ruled that police have the right to legally search garbage, without a warrant. I think they held off on arresting BK hoping to locate the knife, hoping he'd lead them to it (either to dispose of it, or to "visit" it)... MOO. Remember when WA investigators visited the King Road property around December 9th- IMO that was because there was discussion of arresting BK in WA around that time and the visit was part of a probable cause warrant/extradition discussion...MOO-decision was made to not arrest him then, due to the knife issue, and continue with surveillance. IMO the police did the exhaustive Elantra search not just to lull BK into a false sense of security, but to foreclose his defense that some "other" white Elantra was the vehicle, not his...LE can now show they did an exhaustive search for other possible suspects and were able to rule them out...that this was no "rush to judgment" on the part of LE that caused BK's arrest. MOO.
@watson1. you're right about
California v. Greenwood, just not in WA. Higher expectation of privacy in WA.
So DNA probably wasn't from the garbage or if it was, they'd need a warrant, and maybe that's why they were on scene? IDK
Higher expectation of privacy in WA
State v. Boland, 800 P.2d 1112, 115 Wash. 2d 571 (1990)
The Washington Supreme Court diverged from
California v. Greenwood when analyzing the issue under Art. I, §7. In
State v. Boland, 115 Wash.2d 571, 800, 800 P.2d 1112 (1990), the Supreme Court held that under our state constitution, a defendant's private affairs were unreasonably intruded on by law enforcement officers when they removed garbage from his trash can and transported it to a police station to be searched by state and federal narcotics agents.
The Supreme Court held that any resident who places garbage in a can and puts it on the curb for collection reasonably believes the garbage will not be subjected to a warrantless governmental search. 115 Wash.2d at 578. "While a person must reasonably expect a licensed trash collector will remove the contents of his trash can, this expectation does not also infer an expectation of governmental intrusion." Id. at 581. In other words, we expect the collector to pick up our garbage and remove it for proper disposal; we do not expect that the government will search the contents of our garbage bags to identify evidence of wrong-doing.
Abandoned DNA is different, so they likely found other ways to collect his DNA if they did it in WA IMO JMO. In
State v. Athan, the WA Supreme Court found no violation of Article I, section 7 when the police found a creative way to obtain a suspect's DNA
State v. Athan, 158 P.3d 27, 160 Wash. 2d 354 (2007).
