{"id":7198,"date":"2012-08-23T08:16:22","date_gmt":"2012-05-28T00:11:43","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-05-27T11:20:15","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=7198","title":{"rendered":"LA: Police use of recent burglary as pretext for knock-and-talk did not make it invalid"},"content":{"rendered":"

A burglary suspect told the police that he saw marijuana in defendant\u2019s house when he burglarized it. The police used that as a justification for a knock-and-talk, and defendant let them in. They saw marijuana in plain view, and this was valid. Defendant argued pretext for the knock-and-talk, but that was unavailing. State v. Seiler<\/a>, 89 So. 3d 1159 (La. 2012):<\/p>\n

In this instance, defendant’s home was the subject of a recent burglary. Upon information received from the burglary suspect there was contraband in the home, police officers from both the New Orleans Police Property Crimes Unit and officers from the Narcotics Unit traveled to defendant’s home to investigate. When the officers knocked on the defendant’s door, they requested and were granted entry into his home by the defendant himself. As a result, we do not find the officers were unlawfully in that place at that time.<\/p>\n

The trial court, to justify its ruling suppressing evidence, stated in its per curiam the officers used a “pretext” to gain entry to the defendant’s home, in that the officers attempted to enter the defendant’s home under the guise of a continuing burglary investigation, and not a narcotics investigation. However, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Scott v. United States, 436 U.S. 128, 138, 98 S. Ct. 1717, 1723, 56 L.Ed.2d 168 (1978), “the fact that the officer does not have the state of mind which is hypothecated by the reasons which provide the legal justification for the officer’s action does not invalidate the action taken as long as the circumstances, viewed objectively, justify that action.” In other words, if the officers had an objective right to knock on the defendant’s door and ask to be admitted, it is of no moment the reason they were admitted may not have been the full reason they were at the defendant’s home in the first place. Here, detectives knocked on the defendant’s door, informed him they were there to investigate the burglary, and they were granted entry voluntarily by the defendant. See, Sanders, 374 So. 2d at 1188.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Moral to the story? Don’t report a burglary at your house if you keep dope there. Grin and bear it. The number of times I’ve seen that in reported decisions is significant. You never know when the police will show up thereafter. <\/p>\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-7198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7198\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}