Full opinion text
HARLINGTON WOOD, Jr., Circuit Judge. While most people have a good idea what “garbage” is, many people do not realize that garbage can cause some serious constitutional issues. This is such a case. The defendant, Joseph R. Redmon, was indicted in April 1996, charged with the possession of over 400 grams of cocaine, with intent to distribute in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1). After the district court denied his pretrial motion to suppress evidence, Redmon entered a conditional plea of guilty reserving the right to appeal the denial of his motion. In September 1996 the district court sentenced Redmon as a career offender, and this appeal followed. Redmon raises two issues: first, whether the warrantless searches of his garbage cans violated his Fourth Amendment right of protection from “unreasonable searches,” and secondly, a sentencing issue. The facts follow in more detail as they are critical to the consideration of the search warrant constitutionality problem. Factual Considerations In early 1993 a joint federal and local drug enforcement task force in Urbana, Illinois began tracing a shipment of about a pound of cocaine sent from California to a fictitious address in Urbana, Illinois. From an infor: mant the task force determined a man named Shaw was expecting such a package. An undercover agent delivered the package to Shaw who, when interrogated, claimed he had received it, not for himself but for another person who used the alias “Blackbelt.” Blackbelt was later identified as defendant Joseph Redmon, residing at 1319 Harding Drive in Urbana. Redmon’s Harding Drive address was found to be the eastern-most unit of an eight-unit townhouse, all units sharing a common wall. The structure is located on the southwest comer of the intersection of Vawter Street and Harding Drive. Redmon’s townhouse and its entrance actually face east on Vawter Street, although his one-car connected garage faces north on Harding Drive. His garage is also connected to his neighbor’s garage. The two neighbors share a common driveway which extends north from their connecting garages about twenty-four feet to a four-foot wide public sidewalk and then slightly less than an additional ten feet to Harding Drive. The common driveway is about twenty-five feet wide., Access to the townhouses of Redmon and his neighbor could be gained only by first proceeding up their common driveway towards the front of the connected garages. Then from the comer of his side of the garage, Redmon’s sidewalk leads to the left around the comer of the garage to his front door. Access to his adjacent neighbor’s townhouse is also gained by proceeding up the common driveway towards the garages and then proceeding to the right on a sidewalk around the opposite comer of the garage to the neighbor’s front dpor which faces Harding Drive. The constitutional garbage issue arises as a result of police surveillance of Redmon’s townhouse based on their narcotic suspicions. During the surveillance, Redmon was observed carrying his garbage cans out of his garage and placing them on the driveway between the garage doors for collection on collection days: Then after the garbage had been collected Redmon would carry his empty garbage cans back inside his garage. At times Redmon also placed plastic trash bags outside for collection in addition to his garbage cans. The cans were customarily placed for collection between Redmon’s garage door and his neighbor’s. A city ordinance at that time prohibited garbage from being put curbside for collection. The police acted on their suspicions on January 4, 1996, January 22, 1996, and March 14, 1996, when without search warrants they removed the contents of Redmon’s garbage cans while the cans were sitting just outside his garage on the common driveway awaiting collection. The garbage can searches not only confirmed the fact that Redmon resided at that address, but also confirmed police suspicions by revealing evidence of drug dealing. The garbage contained clear plastic bags shown to be commonly used in packing and shipping cocaine. The bags field-tested positive for cocaine. A glass vial test tube wrapped in a Spanish language newspaper was also found. It likewise tested positive for cocaine. Rubber and tape packages were found, commonly used in packaging shipments of cocaine. Those packages also tested positive for cocaine. Based on this garbage can evidence a search warrant for Redmon’s residence was issued in March 1996 by the district judge. That residence search, as anticipated by the police, produced the packages of cocaine charged in the indictment. Search Issue Redmon objects to the search of his house accomplished with a warrant which was issued based on evidence uncovered during the warrantless garbage can searches. First, it is claimed that the garbage cans were located within the curtilage of Redmon’s residence. Secondly, Redmon argues that the containers and their contents had not been “abandoned.” Thirdly, it is claimed that Redmon had a “reasonable expectation of privacy in the contents of his garbage cans.” The war-rantless searches of the garbage cans, Red-mon argues, were therefore in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Redmon sought to quash the residential search warrant obtained on the basis of the garbage can evidence and to suppress the resulting evidence. Redmon’s motion was denied by the district judge. Discussion of the Searches As we approach this search problem we shall not endeavor to fashion some convenient rule to fit all situations. That might be useful in some difficult cases for the police and others, including drug dealers, but many situations, as is this one, can reasonably be expected to be primarily fact-based not lending themselves to bright line rules. We do not mean to imply that the decision in this case upholding the garbage can searches means that anybody’s garbage cans placed on the driveway adjacent to his or her garage, regardless of the other facts and circumstances, can henceforth be searched without a warrant. Each case of this nature will involve the weighing of all the relevant factors and the exercise of a fair judgment with due regard for the important constitutional guarantees as defined by Supreme Court and other conforming precedents. Nor does the affirmance of this conviction mean that this court is issuing a pass to the police to violate the Fourth Amendment. The police, whenever they have sufficient grounds and a warrant would be required, absent urgent circumstances, must seek search warrants to properly serve their own and the public purposes. Nor are we suggesting on the other hand that every police peek into a suspicious garbage can, regardless of the surrounding circumstances, requires a warrant. Nor do all those who want to keep their garbage secret need, because of this decision, resort to storing it under their beds. Nor do the important drug war efforts justify the commission of constitutional violations by the police. However, after considering all the factual circumstances of this case, these police searches, in our judgment, do not violate the constitution. This case would be over if there was a Supreme Court-case “on all fours,” but there is none, nor are there any duplicates in any other circuit which we have been able to find. There are numerous other garbage eases, some similar and some not so similar. Many of those cases would require an unproductive effort to sort out or distinguish the various factual circumstances regardless of the holdings of the cases. There are, however, some applicable guiding principles found in the cases. Many of the cases mention “curtilage” as a factor, that is an imaginary boundary line between privacy and accessibility to the public. Sometimes that line may be easy to locate as where, for instance, a fence or wall around the home keeps out the public. Sometimes, however, the determination can be difficult. The district court did not use the term, but that is of no consequence if the right criteria are otherwise applied. “The mere intonation of curtilage, however, does not end the inquiry.” United States v. Hedrick, 922 F.2d 396, 399 (7th Cir.1991). A curtilage line is not necessarily the property line. Nor can it be located merely by taking measurements from some other ease or precedent and then by use of a tape measure trying to determine where the curtilage is in a different case. Both parties cite our case, United States v. Hedrick, 922 F.2d 396 (7th Cir.1991), to support their positions. The defendant first directs us to wording in Hedrick which he sees as supporting his position. It seems at first to do so. The quote is as follows, “garbage cans located 20(sic) feet from the garage and approximately 50(sic) feet from the back door of the house were technically within the cur-tilage of the house, in which privacy expectations are most heightened.” Id. at 399. That quote, however, must be considered in the context of the whole case. Hedrick, based on other considerations besides mere measurements, held the search valid. Defendant’s argument reveals the folly of trying to decide these cases merely by a tape measure comparison. Redmon then argues with more substance that he had an objectively reasonable expectation of privacy in the garbage cans placed next to his attached garage, and that he was therefore protected from unreasonable searches and seizures of the incriminating evidence. That is the issue. This reasonableness determination can best be begun by considering additional language found in Hedrick. Then the zone of privacy or curti-lage may be determined after considering all the factors, and not just the feet and inches. In Hedrick, the court looked to California v. Greenwood, 486 U.S. 35, 108 S.Ct. 1625, 100 L.Ed.2d 30 (1988), for guidance.. In Greenwood, the police also had their illegal drug suspicions as in the present case. A surveillance of Greenwood’s home was conducted. A cooperative trash collector picked up the plastic garbage bags in front of Greenwood’s house and turned the bags over to the police. A search of the bags revealed items indicative of narcotics use. That information was used by the police to secure a warrant to search Greenwood’s home. The search produced cocaine and hashish leading to the arrest of Greenwood. Greenwood was admitted to bail but soon he followed the same garbage routine and so did the police. Consequently, Greenwood was arrested a second time. The seizure of Greenwood’s garbage bags left at the curb, the Court held, would be a Fourth Amendment violation “only if respondents manifested a subjective expectation of privacy in their garbage that society accepts as objectively reasonable.” Greenwood, 486 U.S. at 39,108 S.Ct. at 1628. Greenwood did not disagree with that standard, but he asserted that he did have an expectation of privacy in his trash. His trash, he explained, was only temporarily at the street waiting to be picked up, then to be mixed with other trash and finally to be deposited at the garbage dump with little likelihood it would be inspected by anyone. The Court accepted the personal privacy expectation of Greenwood under those circumstances, as well as Greenwood’s belief that his trash would not become known to the police or public. The Court, however, imposed an important condition on that privacy expectation if Fourth Amendment protection was to be justified. That constitutional protection does not arise, the Court explains, “unless society is prepared to accept that expectation as objectively reasonable.” Id. at 39-40, 108 S.Ct. at 1628. The Court concluded that Greenwood exposed his garbage to the public sufficiently to defeat his Fourth Amendment claim. The Court in support of its conclusion notes that curbside trash is readily accessible to animals, children, scavengers, snoops, and other members of the public. Id. at 40, 108 S.Ct. at 1628-29. Furthermore, the Court noted that the trash was put at the curb for “the express purpose of conveying it to a third party, the trash collector, who might himself have sorted through [Greenwood’s] trash or permitted others, such as the police, to do so.” Id. Expecting his trash to be picked up by strangers, it was held that Greenwood could have had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the incriminating evidence he discarded in his trash. Id. at 41, 108 S.Ct. at 1629. That trash was therefore not subject to Fourth Amendment protection. We reach the same conclusion in the present case even though it is not strictly a curbside collection. In the present case, Redmon, because of. a local ordinance at the time, could not put his trash at curbside. He therefore had little choice except to keep the cans somewhere on his own property to be available when collection was scheduled. Redmon, in effect, chose the front of the joint garage on the shared driveway-sidewalk to be his curb for garbage pickup purposes. Before Greenwood we had come to a similar conclusion in United States v. Kramer, 711 F.2d 789 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 464 U.S. 962, 104 S.Ct. 397, 78 L.Ed.2d 339 (1983), cited with approval in Greenwood. Greenwood, 486 U.S. at 42, 108 S.Ct. at 1629-30. In Kramer, this court went directly to the point in affirming the conviction and holding “that the special protection the Fourth Amendment accords people in their ‘persons, houses, papers and effects’ does not extend to their discarded garbage.” Kramer, 711 F.2d at 792 (citations omitted). That may fit the definition of garbage some use that, “Garbage is garbage.” The district court found Kramer’s garbage to have been “abandoned.” Id. This court noted in Kramer that there are personal things some do not want other people to see. People sometimes, nevertheless, just throw those things in their trash. Kramer then mentions certain alternatives those people can follow to keep then-secrets from being discovered in their garbage cans. Id. We see no need here, however, to further instruct drug dealers on how to avoid arrest by not making the mistake Redmon made in his case. It was Redmon’s mistake, not the mistake of the police. His garbage cans were purposefully placed by him outside his garage for collection and could not be considered some sort of personal safety deposit boxes designed for his illegal purposes. Not all good police work is unconstitutional. Another pertinent issue in Kramer arose because Kramer claimed the police had trespassed on his property to collect the bags from an area apparently inside his low perimeter fence. Kramer, 711 F.2d at 792. The court assumed for its purposes that the garbage was on defendant’s property when it was collected. In Kramer a distinction is drawn, for example, from a situation in which the police break into a defendant’s house without a warrant and take the contents of the wastebasket in the bedroom. Id. at 793. If that,, or anything close to that, was the factual situation in our present case, that evidence, of course, would not be admissible against Redmon. He would be free to go home to 1319 Harding Drive to be more careful next time, but we might consider sanctions against the government for a frivolous appeal. Kramer’s trash had been collected from just inside his knee-high chain fence along the street curb thirty feet from his house. It was held no privacy interests were infringed. Id. at 794. At first glance Kramer appears to be an easier ease than the present case because Kramer’s trash was near to the curb. Redmon’s “curb” for practical collection purposes was necessarily not at curbside, but on his joint walk-driveway. The paths to the front doors passing near the garbage cans without any obstruction were open to use by friends and guests of himself and his neighbors, as well as solicitors, strangers, postal people, and a myriad of others including animals, and even snoops mentioned by the Supreme Court in Greenwood. Greenwood, 486 U.S. at 40, 108 S.Ct. at 1628-29. Urban dogs and raccoons, though not specifically singled out by the Supreme Court, can be very ingenious in their intrusions of garbage cans. They can easily have their fun with the garbage, spreading it out on the driveway for all to see. Greenwood concludes its garbage discussion by emphasizing that Fourth Amendment protection must “turn on such factors as ‘our societal understanding that certain areas deserve the most scrupulous protection from government invasion.’” Greenwood, 486 U.S. at 43, 108 S.Ct. at 1630 (citation omitted). The Court’s conclusion is that our society would not accept as reasonable a claim to an expectation of privacy in trash left for collection in an area accessible to the public. Id. at 41, 108 S.Ct. at 1629. After considering all the factual circumstances in the present case, that is likewise our conclusion. In Hedrick, we elaborated on the Greenwood holding which, as we mentioned, had cited our Kramer case, 711 F.2d 789 (7th Cir.1983), with favor. As noted in Hedrick, the Kramer decision had been based both upon the theories of abandonment' and exposure to the public. Hedrick, 922 F.2d at 398. The continued viability of the abandonment approach, we noted in Hedrick, was questionable. Id. But whether the abandonment approach still remains questionable is likewise questionable. Redmon injected the abandonment analysis in his argument in the district court by claiming that his garbage had “not been abandoned.” At oral argument Redmon’s counsel was asked whether or not Redmon’s taking his garbage out of his garage and leaving it where it was to be picked up by the collectors evidenced “abandonment.” Counsel’s candid answer was to the effect that there was “some sort of abandonment,” but he argued that abandonment was not the proper focus. It appears, nevertheless, that Red-mon’s garbage was abandoned when he moved it out of his garage and placed it for collection. We see no reason that Redmon’s abandonment intent should also be abandoned so that it cannot be considered along with other factors in making the Fourth Amendment determination. Counsel was asked where he would draw the curtilage line in the Redmon circumstances. He had some difficulty, as do we, with that concept when trying to be specific. The answer can best be found in Greenwood’s discussion which took note, among other factors, that the can had been placed so that it would be picked up by the collector, a third party stranger. Greenwood, 486 U.S. at 40, 108 S.Ct. at 1628-29. Redmon does not claim that the collector was a friend or family member. The Court, in Greenwood, notes that the garbage collector could have sorted through it. himself; or permitted others including the police to do so. Id. The same situation is present here. In Hedrick, we considered the accessibility and exposure of the discarded garbage to the public. Hedrick, 922 F.2d at 398. We also noted that the visibility of the yard to the public was a factor rendering the expectation of privacy unreasonable. Id. at 399. It takes little more than a look at the plat, government exhibit # 1, showing the Red-mon location at the intersection of two city streets and the short common driveway-sidewalk arrangement with his neighbor to see how very publicly exposed and accessible Redmon left his garbage. Redmon, no doubt, did not intend to sacrifice the privacy of his garbage cans which would reveal illegal drug materials. Under the ‘ particular circumstances, however, his expectation was not reasonable, and not an expectation which we believe society is prepared to accept or should accept whether in downstate Illinois or elsewhere in this country. The district court came to the same conclusion. Redmon also suggests that our case, United States v. Pace, 898 F.2d 1218 (7th Cir. 1990), is inconsistent with the conclusion reached in the present case. We fail to see the significance of Pace in Redmon’s circumstances; at least Pace does not involve garbage. In Pace, police entered the garage of a suspect to detain the suspect whom they had cause to believe might be an assassin in a drug situation. The facts in Pace are interesting, but irrelevant in the Redmon conviction. We held in Pace that it was reasonable for police to enter the garage without a warrant even assuming the garage was part of the curtilage. Id. at 1228-29. In footnote 2, we explained the factors to be considered for a curtilage determination which include “the proximity of the area to the home itself, the nature of the uses to which the home is put, whether the area is within an enclosure surrounding the home, and the steps the resident has taken to protect the area from observation by passersby.” Pace, 898 F.2d at 1229 n. 2 (citing United States v. Dunn, 480 U.S. 294, 301, 107 S.Ct. 1134, 1139, 94 L.Ed.2d 326). We believe our decision in Redmon passes all the tests. Sentencing Issues At the time of Redmon’s present offense, March 19, 1996, he was twenty-nine years old. He had a 1989 Illinois felony conviction for possession of cocaine with intent to deliver and a 1986 Illinois aggravated battery conviction. In the Sentencing Commission Enabling Act, Congress directed the Sentencing Commission to specify a sentence of imprisonment “at or near the maximum term authorized” for an adult defendant convicted of a violent crime or felony drug offense who had two such prior convictions. 28 U.S.C. § 994(h). To implement that congressional requirement, the Sentencing Commission promulgated § 4B1.1 of the Guidelines, entitled “Career Offender,” which provides in pertinent part this qualification for that enhancement: A defendant is a career offender if (1) the defendant was at least eighteen years old at the time of the instant offense, (2) the instant offense of conviction is a felony that is either a crime of violence or a controlled substance offense, and (3) the defendant has at least two prior felony convictions of either a crime of violence or a controlled substance offense. Amendment 506 to the Commentary to § 4B1.1 provides that “offense statutory maximum” means only “the maximum term of imprisonment authorized for the offense of conviction ... not including any increase in that maximum term under a sentencing enhancement provision that applies because of the defendant’s prior criminal record.” U.S.S.G. § 4B1.1, Amendment 506. However, in United States v. Hernandez, 79 F.3d 584 (7th Cir.1996), we held that Amendment 506 is inconsistent with § 994(h)’s unambiguous statutory direction and therefore is not entitled to deference. Following Hernandez, the district court applied § 4B1.1 to Redmon without reference to Amendment 506. As applied including the enhancements, § 4B1.1 raised Redmon’s base offense level to 34 from 32. Despite our precedent, Redmon contends that the district court erred in refusing to follow Amendment 506 in applying § 4B1.1 to him. In support of his argument, he relies on United States v. LaBonte, 70 F.3d 1396 (1st Cir.1995), rev’d, — U.S. -, 117 S.Ct. 1673, 137 L.Ed.2d 1001 (1997), in which the First Circuit upheld the validity of Amendment 506. At the time Redmon filed his appeal, the Supreme Court had granted certiorari in LaBonte. Thus, Red-mon requested this court to hold its decision on his sentencing issue in abeyance, reasoning that if the Supreme Court affirmed LaBonte, it would be implicitly reversing Hernandez, and as such, he would be entitled to a new sentencing. The Supreme Court recently issued its opinion in LaBonte, reversing the First Circuit and adopting a holding consistent with our opinion in Hernandez. Therefore, Red-mon’s appeal must fail, and his sentence is affirmed. The sentencing issue as dealt with in the original panel opinion and set out above was not raised for en bane consideration by the court and therefore remains unchanged. The district court is Affirmed in all respects. Government Exhibit #2 View of Redmon’s and his neighbor’s connected garages and joint driveway-walkways. The garbage cans were placed between the garage doors for collection. The exhibit also shows the public walk where it crosses the driveway and at the bottom of the photo can be seen a section of Harding Drive and the street curb. Government Exhibit #5 View of Redmon’s garbage cans out for collection. The walk to his front door goes around the corner of his garage to the left. Government Exhibit #3 View of Redmon’s house from Vawter Street. . Redmon was sentenced to 188 months of imprisonment, six years of supervised release following his imprisonment, and a $50 special assessment. . Government Exhibit #3, a photo reproduced in the addendum, shows the view of the east side and entrance to Redmon's townhouse as seen from Vawter Street. The windowless wall to the right of the entrance is the side of Redmon's part of the garage. Some of the driveway can be seen. .Government Exhibit # 1, included in the addendum, illustrates the layout of Redmon’s and his attached neighbor’s townhouses. Redmon’s side is indicated on the plat as ’‘1319” and his neighbor’s as “1317.” . Government Exhibit #2, reproduced in the addendum, is a view of the connected garages of Redmon and his neighbor and the shared driveway. Redmon’s walk to his front door extends to the left around the comer of the garage and his neighbor’s walk to his front door extends to the right around the garage to the neighbor’s front door. Government Exhibit # 5 shows the garbage cans placed in front of the garage on collection day for pickup. . At one point Redmon's counsel objected to characterizing the garbage cans as garbage cans instead of as some variety of all-purpose plastic containers. That argument appears to have been abandoned, likely because the particular cans looked like garbage cans and- smelled like garbage cans and not like some all-purpose containers. This distinction was noted in our case of United States v. Hedrick, 922 F.2d 396, 399 (7th Cir.1991). . There is another respondent in Greenwood, who is not specifically included in this synopsis as his presence makes no difference for these purposes. . See also United States v. Shanks, 97 F.3d 977, 980 (7th Cir.1996) (holding that the defendant in that case could not have an objectively reasonable expectation of privacy in incriminating evidence when the garbage was in containers readily accessible and visible from public thoroughfares).
COFFEY, Circuit Judge, concurring. I join and concur in Judge Hariington Wood’s well-reasoned analysis as set forth in the majority opinion. Redmon’s garbage simply does not fall within the scope of protection that the Fourth Amendment accords persons, their houses, papers and effects. I write separately to briefly extend several remarks on an issue that appears to have engendered some debate among various members of this Court; namely, whether abandonment theory, that is, the concept of voluntarily and intentionally relinquishing one’s property right in a discarded res, continues to thrive in our Fourth Amendment “garbage” jurisprudence. I think it does, and the majority as well as Judge Flaum seem to agree with me, whereas Judge Rov-ner opines that the theory has “crept into the majority’s analysis” (Rovner, J., concurring at 55), thus claiming that its day came to pass with the Supreme Court’s decision in California v. Greenwood, 486 U.S. 35, 108 S.Ct. 1625, 100 L.Ed.2d 30 (1988). Initially, I am forced to disagree with my esteemed dissenting colleague, for the Greenwood Court never expressly, nor impliedly for that matter, rejected the abandonment theory. Try as one might, no one is able to point to a single passage in the Greenwood majority opinion that suggests otherwise. Instead, Judge Rovner grasps at the passing observations of Greenwood’s two dissenting Justices, who tell us that “[t]he Court properly rejects the State’s attempt to distinguish trash searches from other searches on the theory that trash is abandoned and therefore not entitled to an expectation of privacy,” Id. at 51,108 S.Ct. at 1634 (Brennan, J., dissenting), and then go on to quote from another dissent for the proposition that “ ‘property interest [in trash] does not settle the matter for Fourth Amendment purposes, for the reach of the Fourth Amendment is not determined by state property law.’ ” Id. (quoting California v. Rooney, 483 U.S. 307, 320, 107 S.Ct. 2852, 2859, 97 L.Ed.2d 258 (1987) (White, J., dissenting)). With all due respect, the majority in Greenwood spoke for itself, and I am quite certain that none of its number were interested in having the dissenters write on their behalf. The Greenwood dissent is indeed an exceedingly small hook upon which Fourth Amendment abandonment critics can hang their hats. In my view, the theory of abandonment survived Greenwood, and is alive, well and flourishing in our Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. Simply stated, if it is the customary practice for an individual to deposit his garbage in a receptacle and leave it in a particular place for pick-up by public or private trash collectors, he has manifested an intent to abandon his refuse at such point in time .that he leaves it unsecured in that place. See, e.g., United States v. Shelby, 573 F.2d 971, 973 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 439 U.S. 841, 99 S.Ct. 132, 58 L.Ed.2d 139 (1978) (“In our view the placing of trash in the garbage cans at the time and place for anticipated collection by public employees for hauling to a public dump signifies abandonment.”). Thus, the intent to relinquish ownership and abandon trash is tantamount to “throwing away” a subjective expectation of privacy in it that society accepts as objectively reasonable. In short, when it comes to abandoned property, “I know it when I see it,” Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184, 197, 84 S.Ct. 1676, 1683, 12 L.Ed.2d 793 (1964) (Stewart, J., concurring) (identifying what constitutes “obscene” material), and when the police see abandoned garbage which has been left .unsecured in its usual place and at its usual time for collection, it is theirs for the taking. . I add that the panel in United States v. Hedrick, 922 F.2d 396 (7th Cir.1991), did not extol that abandonment theory is inapplicable in Fourth Amendment cases, but only stated that its continued viability was “questionable.”
FLAUM, Circuit Judge, joined by EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge, concurring. In the context of warrantless trash searches, the Supreme Court has instructed courts to base their assessments of reasonableness on the degree of public accessibility of the trash. See California v. Greenwood, 486 U.S. 35, 41, 108 S.Ct. 1625, 1629, 100 L.Ed.2d 30 (1988). The Court today concludes that Joseph Redmon had no reasonable expectation of privacy in garbage that he left at the point of collection where it was readily accessible to the public. I agree that this is the proper disposition of the present case. While I am sympathetic to the policy concerns raised by the dissenters, I cannot reach their ultimate conclusion because I do not believe that Greenwood’s ready accessibility test contains an “outside the curtilage” limitation. Rather, location is merely one factor in evaluating the accessibility of garbage. Until the Supreme Court imposes a curtilage limitation on Greenwood, I do not believe that we can appropriately infer it. I. The Fourth Amendment protects “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” The Supreme Court has interpreted this constitutional safeguard to bar searches and seizures by the Government that violate a person’s “reasonable expectation of privacy.” See Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967). The Court has stated that “[w]hat a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection” and therefore cannot support a reasonable expectation of privacy. Id. at 351, 88 S.Ct. at 511. In the context of trash searches, a person is considered to have knowingly exposed any trash that is “readily accessible” to the public (and thereby to have forfeited any reasonable expectation of privacy in the trash). Greenwood, 486 U.S. at 40, 108 S.Ct. at 1628-29. The determination of ready accessibility is highly fact-bound, yet because it is essentially a reformulation of the ultimate determination of reasonableness, it receives plenary review from an appellate court. See Ornelas v. United States, 517 U.S. 690, -, 116 S.Ct. 1657, 1663, 134 L.Ed.2d 911 (1996). A review of the applicable case law of this Circuit and the Supreme Court demonstrates that the search of Redmon’s garbage was reasonable. The starting point is the Supreme Court’s decision in Greenwood, 486 U.S. at 35, 108 S.Ct. at 1626. In that case, police searched garbage bags that Greenwood had left for collection on the street curb in front of his house. A trash collector picked up the garbage and then turned it over to the police, who found evidence of narcotics violations inside the trash bags. The Court held that there could be no reasonable expectation of privacy in the discarded inculpatory items because “[i]t is common knowledge that plastic garbage bags left on or at the side of a public street are readily accessible to animals, children, scavengers, snoops, and other members of the public.” Id. at 40, 108 S.Ct. at 1628-29 (footnotes omitted). Moreover, the Court stated, Greenwood left the garbage at the point of collection for the purpose of conveying it to a third party, who might have rummaged through the bags or allowed someone else to do so. Id. at 40-41, 108 S.Ct. at 1628-29. Greenwood could have no reasonable expectation of privacy in his garbage under these circumstances because it was readily accessible to inspection by the public. Greenwood concerned a search of garbage outside the curtilage, but the constitutional standard announced in that case is not confined to searches outside the curtilage. Rather, Greenwood mandates that the touchstone of reasonableness in this context is whether the trash is readily accessible to the public; location is merely one factor in that inquiry. The Greenwood Court stated that “society would not accept as reasonable respondents’ claim to an expectation of privacy in trash left for collection in an area accessible to the public”. Id. at 41, 108 S.Ct. at 1629. Location is a factor in assessing the “readiness” of accessibility, but it is not the only or ultimate consideration. My dissenting colleagues express disagreement with the holding of Greenwood, but since overruling Greenwood is not in our power, they dráw a proverbial line in the sand at the curtilage. Under this approach, garbage outside the curtilage would be fair game for warrantless searches, but once a court determines that the garbage is located within the curtilage, the search would become unconstitutional. While I can identify with the coré concerns expressed by the dissenters, I do not believe that their approach is compatible with the controlling authority. Our Circuit has applied a curtilage-neutral accessibility standard in approving three warrantless trash searches since Greenwood Our most recent case of this sort was United States v. Shanks, 97 F.3d 977, 978 (7th Cir.1996), cert. denied — U.S. -, 117 S.Ct. 1002, 136 L.Ed.2d 881 (1997). Police in that case searched garbage containers located adjacent to a public alley and next to a garage twenty feet from the appellant’s residence. The Court did not address whether the containers were located at the point of collection. In assessing the reasonableness of the warrantless search, we noted that “the mere intonation of curtilage does not end the inquiry,” id. at 979. Shanks did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in his garbage “[e]ven assuming that the garbage containers were within the curtilage of Shanks’ home,” id., because the containers were readily accessible from a public thoroughfare and because such garbage is commonly invaded by snoops, scavengers, and other members of the public. Id. at 980. In United States v. Hedrick, 922 F.2d 396 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 502 U.S. 847, 112 S.Ct. 147, 116 L.Ed.2d 113 (1991), we allowed officers to search garbage at the point of collection in a location that we explicitly held to be within the curtilage of the appellant’s home. See id. at 399 (“Therefore, the garbage cans located 20 feet from the garage and approximately 50 feet from the back door of the house were technically within the curtilage of the home, in which privacy interests are most heightened.”). We nonetheless emphasized that “applying the Greenwood analysis to garbage within the curtilage, the relevant inquiry is whether the garbage cans were so readily accessible to the public that they exposed the contents to the public for Fourth Amendment purposes.” Id. at 400 (emphasis added); see also id. at 399 (“[Containers or sheds within the curtilage would not be protected if their contents could be viewed by people routinely passing on the street or overhead.”). We affirmed the search in Hedrick because the garbage cans were, readily accessible to the public in light of the relatively short distance between the cans and the public sidewalk, as well as the fact that the cans were normally collected from that location by a sanitation service. Id. at 400. The Court’s determination of ready accessibility also took into consider-' ation Greenwood’s observations regarding the common practices of our recurring cast of “scavengers, snoops, and other members of the public in sorting through garbage.” Id. Our first consideration of a. warrantless trash search after Greenwood occurred in United States v. Dunkel, 900 F.2d 105 (7th Cir.1990), vacated in part on other grounds, 498 U.S. 1043, 111 S.Ct. 747, 112 L.Ed.2d 768 (1991). In that ease, a government informant found incriminating financial records in a dumpster' located within an area that the appellant claimed to be the “curtilage” of his business. Seven other commercial tenants shared this dumpster, which was located on the outer edge of the building’s parking lot. We affirmed the district court’s holding that the search did not violate Dunkel’s Fourth Amendment rights because the dumpster was accessible to the public (especially to the other seven commercial tenants). Id. at 106-07. In doing so, we did not formally address Dunkel’s curtilage argument other than to dismiss its relevance to his Fourth Amendment claim: “Intoning ‘curtilage’ does not alter the fact that the parking lot was open to all comers — not only Dunkel’s invitees but also those of his seven tenants.” Id. at 107. Finally, we offered an endorsement of the ready accessibility test: “Someone who tosses documents into a dumpster to which hundreds of people have ready access has no legitimate expectation of privacy in the dumpster or its contents.” Id. Shanks, Hed-rick, and Dunkel therefore reflect our Circuit’s understanding that — regardless of cur-tilage issues — warrantless searches of readily accessible trash do not violate the Fourth Amendment. This view is consistent with our trash search cases that preceded the Supreme Court’s decision in Greenwood. In United States v. Shelby, 573 F.2d 971 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 439 U.S. 841, 99 S.Ct. 132, 58 L.Ed.2d 139 (1978), we held that a warrant-less search of garbage was constitutionally permissible. In that case, police officers obtained a search warrant of the appellant’s house based upon evidence found in a war-rantless search of his garbage. At the behest of the police, sanitation workers — as was their usual custom — removed the trash by reaching over a small fence on the appellant’s property adjoining a public alley. The trash was located inside a low fence on the appellant’s property, and we assumed that area to be within the curtilage of his home. See id. at 974 n. 7. Despite that fact, we nevertheless held that “the ‘seizure’ of the garbage from the defendant’s curtilage did not violate the Fourth Amendment,” id. (emphasis added), because the appellant could have no reasonable expectation of privacy in garbage placed at the point of collection and within easy public access, see id. at 973-74. Similarly, in United States v. Kramer, 711 F.2d 789, 794 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 464 U.S. 962, 104 S.Ct. 397, 78 L.Ed.2d 339 (1983), we held that the appellant did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in his garbage that the police searched without a warrant. The police removed plastic garbage bags from containers located by the roadside in front of Kramer’s house; the cans were at the point of collection inside a knee-high fence. Kramer sought to suppress records of marijuana sales found amidst his garbage. In affirming the district court’s denial of Kramer’s motion to suppress the records, we stated quite curtly that “the special protection the Fourth Amendment accords people in their ‘persons, houses, papers, and effects’ does not extend to their discarded garbage.” Id. at 792. I consider the Court’s holding today to be plainly compelled by Greenwood. I do not necessarily share the view of garbage expounded by the Supreme Court, but that is of little moment to the present task; Greenwood is the law and we must apply it. Whatever ambiguities one can mine from the Greenwood decision with regard to the importance of curtilage (which I do not find), I think that our Circuit precedent fills in those gaps. I recognize that Circuit law is vulnerable to revision upon en banc review, but I believe that our cases have executed Greenwood’s mandate faithfully and do not warrant reconsideration. Without further direction from the Supreme Court, I cannot subscribe to limiting Greenwood in the manner proposed by the dissenters and thereby overrule a significant body of our precedent. I agree with the Majority that Redmon’s garbage in this case was readily accessible to the public. Our decisions demonstrate that the placement of trash at the point of collection goes a long way toward establishing ready accessibility. See Hedrick, 922 F.2d at 400; Kramer, 711 F.2d at 794; Shelby, 573 F.2d at 973; see also Greenwood, 486 U.S. at 41, 108 S.Ct. at 1629. In the instant case, Redmon placed his garbage on his driveway, which served as his usual point of collection. As the Majority opinion points out, a municipal ordinance forbade Redmon from depositing his garbage for collection at the curbside. In other words, once Redmon left the trash for collection in his driveway, it occupied a space that — for purposes of his expectation of privacy in the garbage (and, as I will argue later, his abandonment of the trash)— was not much different than the curbside collection point chosen in other cases. Besides its role as the point of collection, the driveway location severely limited Red-mon’s reasonable expectation of privacy in his trash in other ways, as well. Redmon shared the driveway with his next-door neighbor. Once he placed his garbage in an area of property shared with this neighbor, he gave the neighbor (and the neighbor’s visitors and guests) access to the trash. People generally exclude others from certain areas in order to maintain privacy, and they understand that their expectation of privacy diminishes (if not evaporates) as others gain access to those areas. In addition, the driveway served as part of the walkway to Redmon and his neighbor’s front doors. Invited guests of both Redmon and his neighbor, as well as members of the general public (implicit guests, as the Majority notes), were required to walk past the trash cans sitting in the driveway. This does not imply that the guests were likely to begin rummaging through the contents of the nearby trash cans or bags;. it does, however, suggest that the trash was readily accessible to members of the public who desired to do so. The relatively short distance between the garbage in the driveway and the public sidewalk also supports the Government’s position that the trash was readily accessible. The totality of circumstances in this case convinces me that Redmon did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the searched garbage. The trash was readily accessible to the public — the applicable standard prescribed by Greenwood. Thus, I concur in the decision of the Court today. II. My dissenting colleagues make much of the importance of curtilage in the determination of Redmon’s expectation of privacy. I must respectfully disagree with their approach. I believe that the analytical circularity of the curtilage inquiry only confuses what is already a difficult task in deciding Fourth Amendment issues. I think that cur-tilage is a vestigial concept largely lacking in substantive content, and I feel the need to comment on its role in our warrantless trash search eases. Curtilage receives protection' under the Fourth Amendment because it is “an area intimately linked to the home, both physically and psychologically, where privacy expectations are most heightened.” California v. Ciraolo, 476 U.S. 207, 213, 106 S.Ct. 1809, 1812, 90 L.Ed.2d 210 (1986). The Supreme Court has stated that curtilage is “the area to which extends the intimate activity associated with the ‘sanctity of a man’s home and the privacies of life.’” Oliver v. United States, 466 U.S. 170, 180, 104 S.Ct. 1735, 1742, 80 L.Ed.2d 214 (1984) (quoting Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616, 630, 6 S.Ct. 524, 532, 29 L.Ed. 746 (1886)). The Court has prescribed a multi-factor test to guide curti-lage determinations: [C]urtilage questions should be resolved with particular reference to four factors: the proximity of the area claimed to be curtilage to the home, whether the area is ■included within an enclosure surrounding the home, the nature of the uses to which the area is put, and the steps taken by the resident to protect the area from observation by people passing by. United States v. Dunn, 480 U.S. 294, 301, 107 S.Ct. 1134, 1139, 94 L.Ed.2d 326 (1987). The third of these factors, by the Court’s own admission, is the “centrally relevant consideration,” id., and the “primary focus,” id. at 301 n. 4, 107 S.Ct. at 1140 n. 4; this accords with the Court’s long-standing definition of curtilage from Boyd. Curtilage is thus essentially defined as an area that receives heightened Fourth Amendment protection by virtue of the uses to which it is put and the extent to which those uses are exposed to the public. To my mind, this is yet another in a long line of tests that merely restates the ultimate Fourth Amendment standard of reasonableness. When we decide that trash is within the curtilage, we have concluded that a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy in that trash based, among other things, on the degree of exposure of that trash to the public. Indeed, activities are regarded as “intimate” or “private” precisely because the general public is excluded from them in some fashion. This is no different than the inquiry prescribed by the “ready accessibility” test. By definition, an area containing trash can-, not be defined as curtilage if it is readily accessible to the public; similarly, by definition, the trash contained therein cannot receive Fourth Amendment protection if it is ■readily accessible. Put another way, if someone takes enough steps to guard the privacy of a particular area so that it is deemed to be curtilage, they will also have exhibited a reasonable expectation of privacy in the trash found in that area. For this reason, any time that courts declared that trash was searched in the curtilage of a defendant’s home, they would have already decided that the defendant had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the trash. In this way, curtilage is a descriptive— rather than a -prescriptive — term in our Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. Curti-lage cannot define a defendant’s reasonable expectation of privacy when the very same reasonable expectation is the basis for defining curtilage in the first place. Thus, instead of aiding our Fourth Amendment inquiry in trash search cases, curtilage merely adds another co-extensive layer of tests and factors to the reasonableness . calculus. For these reasons, I cannot join my colleagues’ dissenting opinions that rely on curtilage to bring clarity — or a change of any sort — to our constitutional inquiry in trash search cases. III. Finally, I would also like to comment on the role of abandonment theory in cases involving warrantless searches of garbage. Abandonment is a consideration when assessing the reasonableness of a defendant’s expectation of privacy in his garbage — specifically, in assessing the" degree of public accessibility of his trash. Abandonment of property sends a message tó members of the public implicitly granting them permission to approach, to investigate, and — if they so desire — to convert the property to their own uses. In this way, I believe that abandonment principles can inform a court’s evaluation of the ready accessibility of garbage. A The Continuing Viability of Abandonment Theory To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the death of abandonment theory in trash search cases have been greátly exaggerated. Justice Brennan’s dissenting opinion in Greenwood made two references to the Majority’s supposed rejection of abandonment theory. See 486 U.S. at 49 n. 2, 108 S.Ct. at 1633 n. 2 (Brennan, J., dissenting) '(noting that many of the courts of appeals cases cited approvingly by the Majority “rely entirely on an abandonment theory that, as noted infra, at 1629, the Court has discredited.”); id. at 50, 108 S.Ct. at 1634 (“The Court properly rejects the State’s attempt to distinguish trash searches from other searches on the theory that trash is abandoned and therefore not entitled to an expectation of privacy.”). A careful reader of Greenwood, however, will search in vain for the Majority’s purported disavowal of abandonment theory. In fact, the page cited by Justice Brennan for this proposition demonstrates that abandonment was an important component of the Majority’s holding that Greenwood’s garbage was readily accessible. After noting that “respondents exposed their garbage to the public sufficiently to defeat their claim to Fourth Amendment protection,” id. at 40, 108 S.Ct. at 1628, the Court went on to explain that this conclusion was appropriate because, among other things, “respondents placed their refuse at the curb for the express purpose of conveying it to a third party, the trash collector, who might himself have sorted through respondents’ trash or permitted others, such as the police, to do so.” Id. In summing up the rationale for its holding, the Court again noted the importance of abandonment principles: “Accordingly, having deposited their garbage ‘in an area particularly suited for public inspection and, in a manner of speaking, public consumption, for the express purpose of having strangers take it,’ respondents could have had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the inculpatory items that they discarded.” Id. at 40-41, 108 S.Ct. at 1628-29 (citation omitted). The quoted passage in this summation came from a Third Circuit case which squarely held that placement of trash at the point of collection signifies abandonment. United States v. Reicherter, 647 F.2d 397, 399 (3d Cir.1981). Indeed, Reicherter was not the only lower court opinion applying abandonment theory that the Greenwood Court cited with approval. The Court stated that “[o]ur conclusion that society would not accept as reasonable respondents’ claim to an expectation of privacy in trash left for collection in an area accessible to the public is reinforced by the unanimous rejection of similar claims by the Federal Courts of Appeals.” Greenwood, 486 U.S. at 41, 108 S.Ct. at 1629. In support of this proposition, the Court cited nine cases, seven of which expressly based their holdings on an abandonment theory. Id. at 41-42, 108 S.Ct. at 1629-30. In addition, the Court referenced fifteen decisions from state appellate courts involving warrantless trash searches; nine of these state courts utilized an abandonment theory in approving the disputed searches. Id. at 42-43, 108 S.Ct. at 1629-30. Perhaps in part for these reasons, the First Circuit has stated that, contrary to Justice Brennan’s interpretation, Greenwood did not reject abandonment theory as an element of its holding. See United States v. Scott, 975 F.2d 927, 930 n. 1 (1st Cir.1992), cert. denied, 507 U.S. 1042, 113 S.Ct. 1877, 123 L.Ed.2d 495 (1993). One of the federal appellate decisions cited approvingly by the Greenwood Court was our decision in United States v. Kramer, 711 F.2d 789, 792 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 464 U.S. 962, 104 S.Ct. 397, 78 L.Ed.2d 339 (1983), in which we approved a warrantless trash search based on abandonment theory. The Kramer Court stated quite bluntly that all garbage was to be considered abandoned: “We agree with the trial judge that the special protection the Fourth Amendment accords people in their ‘persons, houses, papers, and effects’ does not extend to then-discarded garbage____ There is nothing unfair about requiring that people not discard things they want to keep secret, or destroy them before they do.” Id. Kramer, in turn, relied upon our earlier decision in United States v. Shelby, 573 F.2d 971, 973 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 439 U.S. 841, 99 S.Ct. 132, 58 L.Ed.2d 139 (1978), which also applied abandonment theory to determine the constitutionality of a warrantless garbage search: In our view the placing of trash in the garbage cans at the time and place for anticipated collection by public employees for hauling to a public dump signifies abandonment. Defendant may have decided to assume the risk, calculating no one would think to search in his garbage can, or he may have been careless, but whatever his reason he evidenced an intent in a convenient but risky way to permanently disassociate himself from the incriminating contents. As I explain later, I do not agree that abandonment theory compels Kramer and Shelby's broad conclusion that garbage never enjoys constitutional protection, but I do not interpret Greenwood to preclude the continued application of. abandonment principles. B. The Contours of Abandonment Theory The basic rule of abandonment theory is that police inspections of abandoned property are not “searches” and therefore are not regulated by the Fourth Amendment. For instance, police may lawfully seize contraband cast away by a fleeing suspect because the contraband has been abandoned by the suspect. See California v. Hodari D., 499 U.S. 621, 629, 111 S.Ct. 1547, 1552, 113 L.Ed.2d 690 (1991). Similarly, a closed container is considered abandoned and therefore subject to search when the suspect disavows ownership of the container. See, e.g., United States v. Knox, 839 F.2d 285, 293 (6th Cir. 1988), cert. denied, 490 U.S. 1019, 109 S.Ct. 1742, 104 L.Ed.2d 179 (1989). Abandonment, in the sense of discard, has even been extended by some courts-to justify warrantless thermal scans, although I think these cases may stretch abandonment theory too far. See, e.g., United States v. Pinson, 24 F.3d 1056, 1058-59 (8th Cir.) (relying on abandonment principles to uphold thermal scans because they detect discarded heat), cert. denied, 513 U.S. 1057, 115 S.Ct. 664, 130 L.Ed.2d 598 (1994). Courts often distinguish the concept of abandonment in the Fourth Amendment context from abandonment as defined by property law. In property law, abandonment is a term denoting total relinquishment of property rights, which thereby enables a finder or subsequent possessor of the property to assert an unassailable interest. When describing abandonment in the constitutional sense, however, many courts explain that the relevant inquiry is not whether the defendant abandoned the property; rather, the issue is whether the defendant abandoned his or her reasonable expectation of privacy in the property by relinquishing possession or disavowing ownership. See, e.g., United States v. Barlow, 17 F.3d 85, 88 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 513 U.S. 850, 115 S.Ct. 148, 130 L.Ed.2d 88 (1994); New Jersey v. Hempele, 120 N.J. 182, 576 A.2d 793, 808-09 (1990); City of St. Paul v. Vaughn, 306 Minn. 337, 237 N.W.2d 365, 370-71 (1975). Understood in this way, however, abandonment in the Fourth Amendment context becomes circular. Courts have set forth the following general principle of abandonment theory: Because there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in abandoned property, the Fourth Amendment does not regulate inspections of it. But the purported test for abandonment in the constitutional sense is whether the previous owner demonstrates an intent to relinquish his or her expectation of privacy in the property. Thus, the logic reduces to the following tautology: Because there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in property in which the owner has relinquished his expectation of privacy, the Fourth Amendment does not regulate inspections of it. This formulation of abandonment in the constitutional sense adds nothing to the analysis. See Hempele, 576 A.2d at 809-10. In short, a conclusion that one has “abandoned” one’s reasonable expectation of privacy is just another way of saying that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy, and that therefore a warrantless search may proceed. Courts have adopted this purported distinction between constitutional and common-law 'abandonment because of the hornbook principle that the boundaries of Fourth Amendment law are not defined by property-law concepts. Oliver v. United States, 466 U.S. 170, 183-84, 104 S.Ct. 1735, 1743-44, 80 L.Ed.2d 214 (1984). Indeed, there is a real difference between property-law and constitutional abandonment, for courts have repeatedly found abandonment for constitutional purposes in situations that might not support a finding of abandonment in the common-law understanding. For instance, courts have held that suspects fleeing the police who discard or hide incriminating evidence have abandoned that evidence even where it is clear that they intended to return and retrieve the evidence had they eluded capture. See United States v. Thomas, 864 F.2d 843, 845-47 (D.C.Cir.1989); Vaughn, 237 N.W.2d at 370-71. In light of these cases, the difference between constitutional and common-law abandonment may simply be that the level of proof required may be lower, and therefore abandonment may be easier to establish, in the Fourth Amendment context. In my view, if abandonment is to retain some meaning in the Fourth Amendment-context, it cannot be totally divorced from its property-law antecedents. It is true that the scope of Fourth Amendment protections is independent of property-law concepts, but this does not mean that property-law concepts cannot inform the constitutional inquiry. The same evidence supporting a conclusion of property abandonment in the common-law understanding — such as relinquishment of possession or disavowal of ownership — will almost always support a conclusion of abandonment for Fourth Amendment purposes. For instance, placement of trash at the point of collection sends a strong signal of abandonment of that property; this factor therefore suggests that the garbage is readily accessible to the public. ' As I have indicated earlier, I believe that abandonment concepts, properly understood, can play a useful role as one factor to be considered in our Fourth Amendment “reasonableness” determinations. The key, as always, is the reasonableness of the disputed search, and the more indication there is that property has been abandoned, the more reasonable it becomes to conduct a warrantless search of that property. Relinquishment of possession, disavowal of ownership, and other indicia of abandonment should be considered along with the other relevant factors in our fact-intensive Fourth Amendment inquiries. No one factor can be a talismanic indicator of reasonableness; courts must consider all factors, and abandonment is only one among many. ■ B