## Facts

- Clear Lake, Iowa required residents to place solid waste at the curb or alley line for weekly collection.
- A city ordinance made it unlawful for any unauthorized person to take or collect solid waste placed out for collection; violations were municipal offenses.
- While investigating suspected drug activity, an officer waited for Nicholas Dean Wright to place opaque, closed trash bags out for collection.
- On three occasions, without a warrant and without probable cause at the outset, the officer seized the bags, opened them, and searched their contents.
- Information and items found in the trash were used to obtain a warrant to search Wright’s home.
- Officers executed the warrant and found controlled substances and related evidence; Wright was charged and convicted.
- Wright moved to suppress, claiming the warrantless trash seizures and searches violated article I, section 8 of the Iowa Constitution; the motion was denied, and the conviction was affirmed on intermediate appeal.

## Issues

1. Whether a warrantless police seizure and search of opaque, closed trash bags left out for municipal collection is an unreasonable search and seizure under article I, section 8 of the Iowa Constitution when local law prohibits private persons from taking that trash.
2. Whether Iowa’s interpretation of article I, section 8 must follow federal Fourth Amendment doctrine “in lockstep,” including the federal rule that curbside garbage is not protected.

## Decision

- The court held that the warrantless seizure, opening, and search of Wright’s opaque trash bags violated article I, section 8 because a private person could not lawfully do the same under the city ordinance.
- The court rejected automatic lockstep reliance on federal Fourth Amendment precedent for interpreting Iowa’s search-and-seizure clause.
- Evidence obtained directly from the unconstitutional trash searches was subject to suppression.
- The court affirmed on condition and remanded for an independent-source analysis to determine whether the home-search warrant and resulting evidence were sufficiently independent of the illegal trash searches.

## Legal Principles

- Article I, section 8 may provide greater protection than the Fourth Amendment, and Iowa courts are not required to follow federal search-and-seizure doctrine in lockstep.
- Under Iowa’s constitution, a warrantless police investigation step is unreasonable when it involves conduct that private persons are legally prohibited from undertaking, absent a warrant or other justification.
- The “reasonable expectation of privacy” inquiry is not the primary tool for defining whether government conduct is a “search” under article I, section 8; it may instead bear on whether a conceded search is reasonable.
- When a warrant is based on information obtained through an unconstitutional search, courts must assess whether the warrant and evidence are nonetheless admissible under an independent-source analysis after excising tainted information.

## Conclusion

The Iowa Supreme Court ruled that police may not, without a warrant, seize and search opaque curbside trash bags when local law forbids ordinary citizens from taking that trash, and it required a remand to determine whether the later home-search warrant rested on an independent, untainted basis.


State v. Wright, 961 N.W.2d 396 (Iowa 2021)