CT: Stepping over a gate on a gated driveway was a warrantless entry onto the curtilage

A police went to defendant’s house on a claim that a missing teenager was there. When there was no answer at the front gate intercom, the officer stepped over it, and entered, and that was a warrantless search of the curtilage. The facts did not support this emergency entry. State v. Ryder, 301 Conn. 810, 23 A.3d 694 (2011). From the syllabus:

a. [Officer] K conducted a warrantless search of the defendant’s property when he stepped over the defendant’s gate and onto the defendant’s curtilage, the area between the defendant’s gate and front door, that was protected by the fourth amendment, the defendant having taken measures to bar the public from his interior driveway, front yard and front door and having had a reasonable expectation of privacy in that area.

b. The emergency exception to the warrant requirement did not justify the warrantless search of the defendant’s curtilage and the subsequent warrantless search of the defendant’s home because a reasonable police officer would not have believed that an emergency existed: it was not objectively reasonable for K to believe that A was in immediate need of help, despite the father’s telephone calls to the police about A, the presence of the car and the couch in the driveway and the lack of an answer at the intercom and the front door, those facts not having provided a sufficient basis for a reasonable belief that an emergency situation existed; furthermore, the father never suggested to the police that A was in danger or likely would be harmed in any way, the father’s telephone call to the police did not rise to the level of a reliable report of a missing person, and the presence of the car parked in the driveway and the couch was not suspect, but, rather, given the totality of the circumstances, should have led to the reasonable belief that no one was home at the time K was at the defendant’s house, rather than to the belief that an emergency existed.