Does a police officer have a right to search a desk drawer containing evidence that has been hidden away in a storage bin?

In People v. Superior Court (Reilly) (1975) 53 Cal.App.3d 40, 125 Cal.Rptr. 504, officers who had defendants under surveillance were standing outside a motel room and could see through partially opened curtains. When one of the defendants spotted the police officers, he immediately put into a desk drawer a wallet, some photographic material, and other papers which became incriminating on a forgery charge. Once lawfully inside the room, the officers opened the drawer and seized the evidence. The court held: "(W)e have no hesitancy in ruling that where the suspect, in fear of imminent disclosure or arrest, is observed to secrete an article, which if left in plain sight would have been subject to seizure, there is no constitutionally unreasonable search or seizure in retrieving that article from the place where the suspect was observed to have placed it." (Id., at p. 48, 125 Cal.Rptr. 504.)

However, these cases only justify the officer's retrieval of the bag from the shelf. They do not deal with the propriety of opening the bag to view its contents. Whether the officer had that right, without first obtaining a search warrant, is contingent upon whether the appellant retained a reasonable expectation of privacy with respect to the contents of the paper bag after having inartfully secreted it on the shelf of the [123 Cal.App.3d 867] storage bin. ² (See People v. Dalton (1979) 24 Cal.3d 850, 157 Cal.Rptr. 497, 598 P.2d 467.)