Driveway Car Searches: Legal without a Warrant?
Recent court cases call into question whether police can enter and search your driveway for evidence of a crime. The Minnesota Supreme Court decided that police needed a warrant to search a vehicle parked on someone’s property. In addition, the Supreme Court of the United States heard oral arguments in a similar warrantless search case.
The Minnesota case involved an allegedly stolen camper van parked in the back of the accused’s property. Police walked onto his driveway and toward the camper van, inspecting it. They determined that it matched the description of a stolen vehicle and charged the accused with receiving stolen property.. The police never obtained a warrant, and the accused argued that the search of his driveway was illegal.
In its decision, the Minnesota Supreme Court agreed with the accused that his driveway was protected from search without a warrant under the Fourteenth Amendment. The driveway is considered “curtilage”, a legal term that means the area directly surrounding a house. Curtilage, like a house itself, cannot be searched by the police without a warrant (unless some exception to the warrant requirement applies).
As noted in the Minnesota case, there is a fine line between curtilage and areas that are too far away from the house to be considered part of it. The stolen camper was visible from the street and far from the house. The police, however, did not knock on the accused’s door and entered the property only to search the camper.
The Supreme Court of the United States considered the same fine-line question recently. In the case, police located a motorcycle matching the description of a stolen vehicle parked on a suspect’s driveway. An officer walked up the driveway, pulled off the tarp covering the motorcycle, and verified that it was the stolen one. The owner was arrested for receiving stolen property.
He argued that the evidence obtained by the police officer should be suppressed because the officer searched his driveway without probable cause and without a warrant. As in the Minnesota case, the owner contended that the automobile exception to the warrant requirement, which usually permits warrantless searches of vehicles, did not apply because the motorcycle was on the house’s curtilage.
During oral argument on the case, the Supreme Court justices seemed skeptical that driveways should be curtilage. The justices’ questions indicated that they may draw the line at including driveways in curtilage since suspects could quickly drive vehicles away while the police obtain a warrant. Once the Court issues its opinion, the question of whether driveway searches are legal without a warrant may be firmly settled.
Arrested for possession of CDS after a driveway car search? Clint Patterson, Esq., of Patterson Law Firm, a former Tulsa prosecutor now using his trial experience and in-depth knowledge of science to defend drivers, assesses his clients’ best options for defenses and sentencing. To schedule a case evaluation, visit Patterson Law Firm online or call Clint’s office at (918) 550-9175.