MN: Officer’s entry on def’s property to look at serial number of an allegedly stolen camper violated curtilage; entry suppressed

Defendant was a suspect in having a stolen pop-up camper on his property. The victim saw it and called the police. The police entered to look at the serial number on the camper, but it was curtilage under Dunn. The officer’s entry on the property violated Jardines because he entered to search first and not to go to the door as any other visitor would. Thus, he violated the implied license granted by Jardines. State v. Chute, 2018 Minn. LEXIS 105 (Mar. 14, 2018):

Respondent Quentin Todd Chute was convicted of possession of a stolen camper trailer. He challenges the district court’s denial of his motion to suppress evidence obtained when an officer entered his property, examined the stolen camper, and then, after obtaining Chute’s consent, searched his home. Chute contends that the officer’s examination of the camper violated his Fourth Amendment rights and tainted his subsequent consent to the officer’s search of his home. The district court concluded that the officer’s entry onto Chute’s property was lawful because the camper was on a driveway that was impliedly open to the public, and that the officer had authority to seize the camper under the plain view doctrine. The court of appeals reversed, and the State sought review. We conclude that because the officer’s conduct objectively amounted to a search and was not a permissible “knock-and-talk,” the warrantless search violated Chute’s Fourth Amendment rights. We therefore affirm the court of appeals.

. . .

Applying the Dunn factors to the unique facts of this case and then balancing them, we conclude that the area of Chute’s backyard on which the camper was parked was “so intimately tied to the home itself that it should be placed under the home’s ‘umbrella’ of Fourth Amendment protections.” Dunn, 480 U.S. at 301. It was curtilage.

. . .

Because Chute had impliedly granted the public access to his backyard to seek “a back door entrance to the house and garage,” we must next consider whether the officer acted within the scope of this implied license while on the property. The scope of the implied license “is limited not only to a particular area but also to a specific purpose.” Jardines, 569 U.S. at 9. The license, therefore, has a spatial limitation and a purpose limitation. To determine whether the officer acted within the limitations of this implied license, we must determine the officer’s purpose, objectively, for entering the curtilage. See id. at 10 (looking to the behavior of an officer to determine whether, objectively, the officer’s purpose complied with the implied license). Based on the evidence, we conclude that the officer’s intrusion violated the limitations of the implied license to enter Chute’s property.

Viewed objectively, the evidence demonstrates that the officer’s purpose for entering the curtilage was to conduct a search. Photographs in the record show that the camper was parked at the end of Chute’s driveway, past the house, in the back corner of Chute’s backyard. To inspect the camper, the officer had to deviate substantially from the route that would take him to the back door of the house or to the garage. The officer walked directly to the camper, inspected it thoroughly, both inside and out, and only turned back toward the house when he was satisfied that the camper was stolen. Anyone observing the officer’s actions objectively would conclude that his purpose was not to question the resident of the house, but to inspect the camper, “which is not what anyone would think he had license to do.” Jardines, 569 U.S. at 10; …

. . .

Like the Eighth Circuit, we have never held that a “knock-and-talk” license allows officers to proceed to the backyard of the property before attempting to contact the resident at the front door. But even assuming that the officer was permitted to bypass the front door of Chute’s house, he was not permitted to stray from a visitor’s normal route of access. As even the dissent in Jardines recognized, “[a] visitor cannot traipse through the garden, meander into the backyard, or take other circuitous detours that veer from the pathway that a visitor would customarily use.” 569 U.S. at 19 (Alito, J., dissenting); accord id. at 9 (explaining that “social norms that invite a visitor to the front door do not invite him there to conduct a search”). By moving away from the path that a visitor would reasonably use to access the house or garage, the officer violated the spatial limitations of the implicit license.

The officer also violated the temporal limitations of the implicit license. In Jardines, the Court noted that an implied license authorizes visitors to enter the curtilage “briefly,” unless they receive an “invitation to linger longer.” Id. at 8. …

h/t to a reader