Police dig in the TRASH at 4 a.m. without a warrant. Trash bin - outside near apartment's CURTILAGE

Описание: The Fourth Amendment, of course, provides that “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.” U.S. Const. amend. IV. The Supreme Court has recently emphasized that this text “establishes a simple baseline”—namely, “[w]hen the Government obtains information by physically intruding on persons, houses, papers, or effects, a search within the original meaning of the Fourth Amendment has undoubtedly occurred.” Jardines,133 S.Ct. at 1414 (citing United States v. Jones, ––– U.S. ––––, 132 S.Ct. 945, 950–51, 950 n. 3, 181 L.Ed.2d 911 (2012)) (internal quotation marks omitted). Applying this “traditional property-based understanding of the Fourth Amendment,” id. at 1417, the Jardines Court held that “using a drug-sniffing dog on a homeowner's porch to investigate the contents of the home is a ‘search’ within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment,” id. at 1413. The Court explained that by going onto the home's front porch, the officers had undoubtedly entered the home's curtilage—that is, the “area immediately surrounding and associated with the home” that is treated “as part of the home itself for Fourth Amendment purposes.” Id. at 1414 (internal quotation marks omitted). And because “the officers' investigation took place in a constitutionally protected area,” it was a search implicating the Fourth Amendment unless the officers had license, either explicit or implicit, to gather information there. Id. at 1415. The Court concluded that the officers lacked such permission because “the background social norms that invite a visitor to the front door do not invite him there to conduct a search.” Id. at 1416.

The test used to determine the boundaries of a home's curtilage is not “a finely tuned formula that, when mechanically applied, yields a ‘correct’ answer to all extent-of-curtilage questions.” United States v. Dunn,480 U.S. 294, 301, 107 S.Ct. 1134, 94 L.Ed.2d 326 (1987). In Dunn, the Supreme Court instructed “that curtilage questions should be resolved with particular reference to four factors: [1] the proximity of the area claimed to be curtilage to the home, [2] whether the area is included within an enclosure surrounding the home, [3] the nature of the uses to which the area is put, and [4] the steps taken by the resident to protect the area from observation by people passing by.” Id.

Because the police did not physically intrude upon a constitutionally protected area, we conclude that Jackson cannot prevail under the property-based approach to the Fourth Amendment articulated in Jardines.”

The Supreme Court confronted a very similar set of facts in Greenwood, where it held that the Fourth Amendment does not prohibit “the warrantless search and seizure of garbage left for collection outside the curtilage of a home.” 486 U.S. at 37, 108 S.Ct. 1625.

Full case here: United States v. Jackson, 728 F.3d 367 (4th Cir. 2013), https://casetext.com/case/united-stat...

Anton Vialtsin, Esq.
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