{"id":2613,"date":"2009-04-18T06:41:07","date_gmt":"2008-10-28T03:55:19","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-10-31T04:04:30","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=2613","title":{"rendered":"KY: Knock-and-talk that went to back door was unreasonable"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a knock-and-talk, officer’s going to the back door after smelling marijuana exceeded the authority given to the public to access the property. Quintana v. Commonwealth<\/a>, 276 S.W.3d 753 (Ky. 2008):<\/p>\n

A back yard is not normally an area that the general public would perceive as public access. While the back yard may not always enjoy the protection of the curtilage, it is a rare one that does not. See Daughenbaugh v. City of Tiffin, 150 F.3d 594, 601 (6th Cir. 1998) (“The backyard and area immediately surrounding the home are really extensions of the dwelling itself. This is not true simply in a mechanical sense because the areas are geographically proximate. It is true because people have both actual and reasonable expectations that many of the private experiences of home life often occur outside the house.”). Under the four-factor analysis of Dunn<\/a>, the back yard in this case satisfies proximity since it was immediately in back of the house; while not completely enclosed, home living items were in the yard; and a concrete patio was in the yard behind the house, as was a large gas tank which shielded part of the patio from view. Perhaps most telling about Appellant’s expectation of privacy is the presence of a dog kennel and what appear to be other animal pens. Most importantly, the discovery made by the officer could not have been made by sight (or smell) from an area outside the yard; he had to be right under the window unit to perceive the smell. In short, the back yard was within the curtilage of the house and Appellant Quintana had a reasonable expectation of privacy in it. The officer did not have the right to be there absent a warrant, meaning any information he uncovered there (the “smell” of marijuana) was improper and thereby tainted the search warrant based on it. The evidence found as the result of the improperly obtained search warrant thus should have been suppressed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"pingsdone","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2613\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}