Florida V. Jardines Case Study

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Of the various places and things the Fourth Amendment protects, “the home is first among equals.” Florida v. Jardines, 133 S.Ct. 1409, 1414 (2013). For Fourth Amendment purposes, places and things protected includes the home and its curtilage, which is the area “immediately surrounding and associated with the home.” Id. Where there is no reasonable expectation of privacy, there is no Fourth Amendment protection coverage. See Katz v. United States, 88 S. Ct. 507 (1967). To determine whether a legitimate expectation of privacy exists, the court must determine whether an individual possessed 1) an actual (subjective) expectation of privacy in the place or thing searched; and 2) whether the expectation is objective, one that society recognizes
Florida v. Jardines, 133 S.Ct. 1409 (2013). In Jardines, police officers took a drug-sniffing dog to the defendant’s front porch and the dog later gave a positive alert for narcotics. Id. at 1413. Following the alert, officers obtained a search warrant and located narcotics inside the defendant’s home. Id. The Supreme Court held officers’ use of the drug-sniffing dog to investigate the home and its curtilage constituted a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. Id. at 1417-18. The Court reasoned that officers physically intruded onto defendant’s property when they entered upon the curtilage of the defendant’s home to gather incriminating evidence. Id. at
First, Reed’s entry with his trained narcotics detection dog falls short of a trespass. Under Jardines, a trespass occurs when an officer physically intrudes upon property or upon the curtilage of a home to gather incriminating evidence. Florida v. Jardines, 133 S. Ct. 1409, 1417 (2013). Unlike Jardines, Reed’s actions does not constitute a trespass because Reed and the trained narcotics detection dog did not physical intrude upon Appellant’s apartment or its curtilage, but rather entered upon the common hallway. In comparing Jardines to the present case, the two are distinctively different. A front porch adjoined to a home and a common hallway of an apartment building are in no way similar and are not be held to the same level of constitutional

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