Texas-Book-Gun Law Armed And Educated - Flipbook - Page 57
EXAMPLE:
The police are chasing Curtis, a robbery suspect, through a
neighborhood. Unfortunately, Curtis decides to evade the cops
by running into Eric’s home! Because the police are in hot pursuit
of an alleged felon, they have every right to enter Eric’s home
without a warrant, and may search any place in his house that
Curtis could possibly be hiding. To make matters worse, they see
on Eric’s kitchen counter what they believe is drug paraphernalia.
They can now seize these items to investigate and use them to
develop probable cause for a search warrant or to arrest Eric.
B. Open fields
The police don’t need a warrant to march around and search the
open fields outside your home. What is an open field? It’s any area
“out of doors in fields, except in the area immediately surrounding
the home.” Oliver v. United States, 466 U.S. 170, 178 (1984). The
area immediately surrounding your home is the “curtilage,” and the
police have to get a warrant to search this area. Why are the open
fields different from the spaces immediately adjacent to your home?
Courts have said that people do not have a reasonable expectation
of privacy in the open fields outside because open fields aren’t
private enough to invoke the protections of the Fourth Amendment.
C. Abandoned property
Courts have consistently held that persons cannot object to the
seizure and evidentiary admission of abandoned property. An officer
only has to have a reasonable belief that a person has abandoned
the property. Because of that, any reasonable expectation of privacy
in the property is lost. The most notable example of abandoned
property is your garbage on the street awaiting collection.
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