D.Kan.: By not stopping before his driveway, def consented to police entry onto the curtilage

Officers attempted to stop defendant’s car but he drove to his driveway. There ultimately was a dog sniff of the car. The court finds that, by driving to his driveway with police behind him, his actions were consent for police entry into his curtilage. “Here, consent may be inferred because Defendant affirmatively led law enforcement to his driveway to conduct the stop. Under these circumstances, Defendant had no more Fourth Amendment protections in his driveway than he would have had in any of the open spaces he passed on the public roadway. Upon initiating the stop, Officer Friedrichs issued repeated commands to Defendant—including lights, siren, and a verbal directive—to stop his vehicle in the public road. Although the evidence establishes there were multiple places where Defendant could have stopped, Defendant ignored Officer Friedrichs’s commands and instead led him to Defendant’s property, even motioning out of the Tahoe’s window to indicate which direction he would turn.” United States v. Zabokrtsky, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 39056 (D. Kan. Mar. 6, 2020).

Defendant never specifically denied driving the car that police saw him get out of and put the keys in his pocket. He did try to distance himself from it by walking away from it. He called his girlfriend to retrieve the car. Defendant had standing. The officers had reasonable suspicion for a stop, and then the smell of marijuana was apparent from his person and the car, and that justified its search. United States v. Williams, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 38990 (S.D. Fla. Jan. 31, 2020),* adopted, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 37828 (S.D. Fla. Mar. 4, 2020).*