Can a police officer rely reasonably on the authority of a landlord to enter an apartment and search the tenant's room?

The expectations of privacy protected by the fourth amendment, as a general rule, should be measured in objective terms. This follows not only from the proposition that protected expectations are those society as a whole treats as legitimate, itself an objective concept, but also from the premise that "the primary, if not the sole, justification for the exclusionary rule is the deterrence of police conduct that violates Fourth Amendment constitutional rights." United States v. Ajlouny, 629 F.2d 830, 840 (2d Cir. 1980). These concepts necessarily imply an objective standard for evaluating police conduct. ² On the facts of this case, an objective measure for evaluating privacy expectations of the defendant is appropriate, and by this standard the search was lawful.

An officer cannot always assume that an invitation to enter a room or dwelling is necessarily authorized by the rightful occupant. Thus, in Stoner v. California, 376 U.S. 483, 84 S.Ct. 889, 11 L.Ed.2d 856 (1964), the police could not assert that a hotel clerk had authority to admit them to the defendant's room. Such an assumption was an implausibly naive view of the law, and not a factually supportable inference of the occupant's probable intent. ³ The case before us, however, is one in which the officer could rely reasonably on the authority of the landlord to admit him to the apartment. ⁴

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