NC: Boat 70′ from house wasn’t on curtilage

The officer described defendant’s boat with the drugs in it as being on the curtilage as a way to connect it to defendant to support drug possession. The facts, however, belie curtilage because it was 70′ from the house. The state otherwise failed to connect defendant to the boat. State v. Dulin, 2016 N.C. App. LEXIS 606 (June 7, 2016):

Sergeant McDonald’s testimony characterizing the boat as within the “curtilage” of the house does not make it so. His testimony in this regard is more of a legal conclusion than a factual description of the premises, and we note that on appeal, the State makes no argument in support of his conclusion. The facts in evidence cannot support his conclusion that the boat was actually within the curtilage. The evidence showed that the boat was out in the open, in an unfenced area of the yard about seventy feet from the home. There was no evidence that this area of the yard was in any way “intimately linked to the home,” either “physically [or] psychologically[.]” See id. at 759, 767 S.E.2d at 317 (quoting California v. Ciraolo, 476 U.S. 207, 212-13, 90 L. Ed. 2d 210, 216 (1986)). In fact, the boat was farther from defendant’s home than the marijuana plants were from the home of the defendant in Grice and was also located in an open, unfenced area. See id. at 754-55, 767 S.E.2d at 314-15. In addition, all four Dunn factors militate against a conclusion that the boat was within the house’s curtilage. See Dunn, 480 U.S. at 301, 94 L. Ed. 2d at 334-35. Thus, the boat was not in an area “intimately” associated with the home and could not be connected to defendant simply based upon its location in the yard. See Grice, 367 N.C. at 759, 767 S.E.2d at 317 (citation omitted).