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Friday, June 22nd, 2018

Circuit Upholds Warrantless Search of Car, Remands for Resentencings to Consider Downward Departures and Concurrent Sentences

In United States v. Jones, the Circuit affirmed the district court’s refusal to suppress evidence seized during a warrantless search of a car parked in the common parking lot of a multi-family building.  The Circuit held Jones had no legitimate expectation of privacy in his car because it was parked in a driveway shared by tenants of two multi-family homes, not within the curtilage of his private home, and he did not have exclusive control over the driveway.  Op. at 13-15.

In United States v. Sawyer, the Circuit remanded the case for the second time, this time for resentencing in front of a new district judge.  The Circuit previously had vacated as substantively unreasonable a 360-month sentence for the offenses of producing and receiving child pornography.  In that opinion, the Circuit held that the “30-year sentence would have been appropriate for ‘extreme and heinous criminal behavior’ and the …

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Categories: automobile exception, child pornography, concurrent, curtilage

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Categories: automobile exception, child pornography, concurrent, curtilage

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Friday, June 1st, 2018

This Week’s Supreme Court Opinions

This week the Supreme Court issued two opinions, both of which seem relatively straightforward in their holdings.

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In Collins v. Virginia, the Court held that the automobile exception to the Fourth Amendment does not permit a warrantless search of a vehicle parked within the curtilage of a home. In Collins, police officers tracked a stolen vehicle to the address of the defendant’s girlfriend. There, parked in the driveway, an officer saw what appeared to be a motorcycle frame covered with a white tarp. The officer entered the driveway, uncovered the tarp, and confirmed that it was the stolen motorcycle.

Justice Sotomayor’s opinion, for an eight-member majority, is clear in its language and broad in its scope. The opinion swiftly concludes that the part of the driveway on which the motorcycle was parked was curtilage.  That portion of the driveway was enclosed on three sides, but open …

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Categories: automobile exception, curtilage, Fourth Amendment, MVRA

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Categories: automobile exception, curtilage, Fourth Amendment, MVRA

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Tuesday, May 1st, 2018

Second Circuit Reverses Denial of Suppression Motion, Clarifies Scope of Curtilage

Today the Second Circuit reversed the denial of a motion to suppress guns that police found adjacent to a shed in the backyard of a defendant’s home. United States v. Alexander, No. 16-3708 (2d Cir. 2018) (Lynch, Carney, Hellerstein (SDNY)) (appeal from Amon, J., EDNY). This area, the panel held, was curtilage and thus considered part of the home for Fourth Amendment purposes. In so holding, the panel clarified that Florida v. Jardines, 569 U.S. 1 (2013), abrogates at least three Second Circuit opinions suggesting that driveways and other publicly accessible areas fall outside the curtilage of a home. The opinion in Alexander, which this office litigated, is available here.*

The defendant in Alexander lived in a narrow house, on a property fenced on three sides but open to the street. The property included a driveway that extended past the house, with a shed …

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Categories: curtilage, Fourth Amendment

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Categories: curtilage, Fourth Amendment

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Wednesday, December 24th, 2008

Dogged Determination

United States v. Hayes, No. 07-0063-cr (2d Cir. December 24, 2008) (Miner, McLaughlin, Pooler, CJJ)

On the morning of September 3, 2002, Derrick Hayes overdosed on cocaine. After he was put in an ambulance, his girlfriend gave local police officers permission to search the house. They found evidence suggesting that Hayes was a large-scale drug trafficker, so they suspended the search and made arrangements to obtain a search warrant. One of the officers, while waiting for the warrant, released a drug-sniffing dog, “Kilo,” from the car, where it had been confined for several hours. During a Frisbee came with the officer in Hayes’ front yard, the dog alerted. The officer encouraged the dog to continue investigating, and it ran around Hayes’ house, toward the back of a detached garage. From an area of thick brush, about sixty-five feet from the house, and near the border with a neighbor’s property, the …

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Categories: curtilage, Fourth Amendment, Uncategorized

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