{"id":8171,"date":"2012-12-31T08:08:10","date_gmt":"2013-01-02T00:10:17","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-12-31T08:05:21","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=8171","title":{"rendered":"TN: Knock-and-talk at side door was not onto curtilage"},"content":{"rendered":"

Officer went to defendant\u2019s door for a knock-and-talk and saw things in plain view that were subject to seizure. When defendant didn\u2019t answer, the officer went to another door, this one on the side which was also visible from the street. Going to the back door would have been more troubling, but that\u2019s not the case. State v. Ronewicz<\/a>, 2012 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 1085 (December 26, 2012):<\/p>\n

The officer’s decision to move from the front door to the “back” door of the defendant’s residence while conducting the “knock and talk” is more troubling. This court has cautioned on numerous occasions that the “knock and talk” exception is not an open license for police officers to prowl through the yards of private citizens or peer through their windows. “Any substantial and unreasonable departure from an area where the public is impliedly invited exceeds the scope of the implied invitation and intrudes upon a constitutionally protected expectation of privacy.” Harris, 919 S.W.2d at 624 (internal quotation omitted). When Detective Howell stepped off the presumably well-worn path from the street to the defendant’s front door, he began treading on constitutionally-dangerous turf.<\/p>\n

However, it is plain from the testimony and exhibits we have reviewed in this case that what the parties refer to as the “back” door of the defendant’s residence was actually more akin to a side door, as it was visible from the public street (because the defendant’s house was located on a corner lot), there was a path leading to it, and it was not fenced-in. …<\/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-8171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8171","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=8171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8171\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}