FL1: Police entry to the yard to peer in home’s windows violated the Fourth Amendment

“Our state and federal constitutions declare that homes—whether castles or cabins, mansions or mobile homes—are protected spaces that require a warrant or other lawful basis to justify a governmental intrusion. At issue in this case is whether police officers entering the property of Russell Powell and Benjamin Wilbourn and peering into a window of their mobile home late at night after receiving an anonymous tip an hour earlier that marijuana plants were inside was a search that violated the Fourth Amendment. Because the officers intruded into a constitutionally protected area without a warrant and peered into a window from a part of the property where they had no lawful right to be, an unconstitutional search occurred.” Powell v. State, 2013 Fla. App. LEXIS 8166 (Fla. 1st DCA May 22, 2013):

It is a different matter when police officers choose to physically enter other portions of a home’s curtilage—areas where they have no right to be. See, e.g., Olivera v. State, 315 So. 2d 487, 488 (Fla. 2d DCA 1975) (leaving walkway and crossing grass to stand next to a window to listen to conversation inside was unreasonable). Even when governmental agents are engaging in otherwise lawful “knock-and-talks,” they can exceed the scope of a reasonable visit to a front door or porch through physical actions that encroach into areas in which the resident has a reasonable expectation of privacy. State v. Adams, 378 So. 2d 72, 74 (Fla. 3d DCA 1979) (standing on a chair on front porch to look down from a window into apartment was unreasonable). Cf. State v. Leonard, 764 So. 2d 663, 664 (Fla. 1st DCA 2000) (stretching to full height and standing on tiptoes on doorsill was reasonable).

C.

Turning to the case at hand, we focus only on whether the officers peering into the window violated the Fourth Amendment. …

We begin with the burden of proof. Because the officers lacked a warrant at the time they looked in the window, the burden rested with the State to justify an exception to the warrant requirement. Hilton v. State, 961 So. 2d 284, 296 (Fla. 2007) (“When a search or seizure is conducted without a warrant, the government bears the burden of demonstrating that the search or seizure was reasonable.”); Kilburn v. State, 54 So.3d 625, 627 (Fla. 1st DCA 2011) (“A warrantless search is per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment subject to a few well-defined exceptions. … The State has the burden to prove that an exception to the warrant requirement applies.”) (citation omitted).

To meet its burden, the State presented the testimony of two officers along with the search warrant. Because the trial court made no written findings of fact, “we view the evidence and all reasonable inferences from it in the light most favorable to sustaining the order.” State v. DeLuca, 40 So. 3d 120, 123 (Fla. 1st DCA 2010). Of course, “a suppression order that turns on an issue of law is reviewed by the de novo standard of review.” Ikner v. State, 756 So. 2d 1116, 1118 (Fla. 1st DCA 2000).

Here, our task is made easy because there are no disputed facts: the officers candidly explained what they did and why they did it. No dispute exists that the officers were within the curtilage of the home when they peered into the window; the officers conceded as much in their testimony. To our knowledge, no court has held that an area within arm’s length of a home’s window is anything other than within the curtilage.

The question then becomes whether the officers looking into the window violated either the privacy or intrusion tests. We apply the latter first, it being the more straightforward. Under the intrusion approach, we query whether the police officers physically “occupied private property for the purpose of obtaining information” without express or implied permission to do so, thereby intruding into an area protected by the Fourth Amendment. Jones, 132 S. Ct. at 949. Here, the deputies initially followed established norms: they approached the front door via the pathway, took one step up, and knocked. Receiving no response, a private citizen would have had no choice but to depart immediately via the pathway. Indeed, Deputy Tysall acknowledged that if someone inside the home had told the officers to go away, they would have done so after asking if the occupants were okay.

The deputies, however, deviated from established norms by entering upon that portion of the property directly in front of the window. Nothing in their testimony or the record establishes any license to do that. The officers had to step off the front door step, move two feet to the left, and position themselves directly in front of the window, their faces no more than a foot away. At that point they were virtually within the home without breaking its close. Because they physically entered a part of the curtilage where they had no right to be for the purpose of gaining information, the intrusion test is met.

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