TN: Entry onto curtilage for trash pull violated 4A

Officers violated the curtilage by entering defendant’s property to do a trash pull. Removing that information from the affidavit for the search warrant leaves it without probable cause. The CI information that started the investigation alone isn’t enough to show probable cause. State v. Weatherly, 2018 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 385 (May 18, 2018):

In the present case, the police officers entered the curtilage of the Defendant’s home and approached his trash can, which was located off the driveway and next to the kitchen door on the right side of the Defendant’s home. The officers retrieved the trash bags from the trash can for the express purpose of searching their contents. There is no evidence that the trash can was at a location where trash collectors would have collected the trash for disposal on that day. We conclude that the police officers entered a constitutionally protected area and gathered evidence through an unlicensed physical intrusion. Accordingly, the “trash pull” was an unconstitutional, warrantless search. See Commonwealth v. Ousley, 393 S.W.3d 15, 33 (Ky. 2013) (holding that police officers engaged in an unconstitutional search by entering the curtilage of the defendant’s home without a search warrant and removing trash bags from a trash container).

We need not decide whether the officers’ investigation violated the Defendant’s reasonable expectation of privacy. “One virtue of the Fourth Amendment’s property-rights baseline is that it keeps easy cases easy.” Jardines, 569 U.S. at 11. The fact that “the officers learned what they learned only by physically intruding on [the Defendant’s] property to gather evidence is enough to establish that a search occurred.” Id.