CA3: RS not required before knock-and-talk

Officers came to defendant’s house to do a knock-and-talk for drugs, and they had to come though a gate to get to the front porch. They talked to defendant’s longtime live-in companion who told them he wasn’t home. She agreed they could come in and talk. They concluded she was lying about where he was and then finally admitted he was upstairs. They told him to come down, and he did. He said no search without a warrant, and they said they could do that, but the house would be secured and they would likely tear the place up during the search. If he consented, they said he wouldn’t be incarcerated. He consented to a search of the house, cutting off their reading the consent form to him. They found a considerable amount of marijuana and arrested him. Neither lesser intrusive measures nor reasonable suspicion are constitutionally required before a knock-and-talk. Knowledge of a right to refuse is only a factor in the totality, particularly when facing strong evidence of consent. United States v. Claus, 458 Fed. Appx. 184 (3d Cir. 2012):

Claus argues that the officers’ conduct should not be sanctioned as a constitutional “knock and talk” because they did not first attempt other less intrusive investigatory steps. However, the recognized purposes behind the “knock and talk” procedure is to either speak with occupants or ask for consent to search. As a result, no objective level of suspicion is required. See United States v. Cormier, 220 F.3d 1103, 1109 (9th Cir. 2000) (holding that “no suspicion is needed to be shown in order to justify the ‘knock and talk'” (citing Florida v. Bostick, 501 U.S. 429, 434 (1991))). We therefore refuse to impose the additional protections urged by Claus.