by Jefferson L. Ingram

Significance of the Case: Where police enter onto private residential premises without a warrant to seach a motor vehicle on the premises, such entry violates the Fourth Amendment and the evidence discovered generally must be suppressed when offered against a resident of the home.

Collins v. Virginia

584 U.S. ___, 138 S. Ct. 1663, 201 L. Ed. 2d 9, 2018 U.S. LEXIS 3210 (2018)

Facts:

While investigating two separate traffic accidents involving an orange and black motorcycle with an extended frame, the police officer learned that the motorcycle was probably stolen and was also in possession of petitioner Collins. By using Facebook, the officer discovered photographs on Mr. Collins' Facebook profile that included the same distinctive orange and black motorcycle parked in the driveway of the home. The officer use the Facebook data to find the home and when the officer arrived, no one appeared to be home. In the driveway, under a white tarp appeared to be the stolen motorcycle. Without a warrant, the officer walked up the driveway removed the tarp and confirmed the stolen status of the motorcycle by the license plate and the VIN.   The officer waited until Mr. Collins arrived home and promptly arrested him for possession of the stolen motorcycle. The defendant's motion to suppress the evidence of the motorcycle was denied by the trial court and rejected Collin's contention that the officer violated the Fourth Amendment when he trespassed beyond the curtilage of Collins' home, in conducting a search of the motorcycle. The Court of Appeals affirmed, as did the state Supreme Court of Virginia, which held that the warrantless search was justified, under the automobile search exception to the warrant requirement.The Supreme Court of the United States granted certiorari.

Procedural Issue:

Does the automobile exception to the Fourth Amendment warrant requirement permit a warrantless entry into the curtilage surrounding a private home to engage in a search of the space or the search of a vehicle parked outside of a dwelling?

Held: No.

Rationale:

SOTOMAYOR, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which ROBERTS,C. J., and KENNEDY, THOMAS, GINSBURG, BREYER, KAGAN, and GORSUCH, JJ., joined. THOMAS, J., filed a concurring opinion. ALITO, J., filed a dissenting opinion.

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II

The Fourth Amendment provides in relevant part that the “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.” This case arises at the intersection of two components of the Court’s Fourth Amendment jurisprudence: the automobile exception to the warrant requirement and the protection extended to the curtilage of a home.

A 1

The Court has held that the search of an automobile can be reasonable without a warrant. The Court first articulated the so-called automobile exception in Carroll v. United States, 267 U. S. 132 (1925). In that case, law enforcement officers had probable cause to believe that a car they observed traveling on the road contained illegal liquor. They stopped and searched the car, discovered and seized the illegal liquor, and arrested the occupants. Id., at 134–136. The Court upheld the warrantless search and seizure, explaining that a “necessary difference” exists between searching “a store, dwelling house or other structure” and searching “a ship, motor boat, wagon or automobile” because a “vehicle can be quickly moved out of the locality or jurisdiction in which the warrant must be sought.” Id., at 153.

The “ready mobility” of vehicles served as the core justification for the automobile exception for many years. California v. Carney, 471 U. S. 386, 390 (1985) (citing, e.g., Cooper v. California, 386 U. S. 58, 59 (1967); Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U. S. 42, 51–52 (1970)). Later cases then introduced an additional rationale based on “the pervasive regulation of vehicles capable of traveling on the public highways.” Carney, 471 U. S., at 392. As the Court explained in South Dakota v. Opperman, 428 U. S. 364 (1976):

“Automobiles, unlike homes, are subjected to pervasive and continuing governmental regulation and controls, including periodic inspection  and licensing requirements. As an everyday occurrence, police stop and examine vehicles when license plates or inspection stickers have expired, or if other violations, such as exhaust fumes or excessive noise, are noted, or if headlights or other safety equipment are not in proper working order.

 In announcing each of these two justifications, the Court took care to emphasize that the rationales applied only to automobiles and not to houses, and therefore supported “treating automobiles differently from houses” as a constitutional matter. Cady v. Dombrowski, 413 U. S. 433, 441 (1973).

When these justifications for the automobile exception “come into play,” officers may search an automobile without having obtained a warrant so long as they have probable cause to do so. Carney, 471 U. S., at 392–393.

Like the automobile exception, the Fourth Amendment’s protection of curtilage has long been black letter law.“[W]hen it comes to the Fourth Amendment, the home is first among equals.” Florida v. Jardines, 569 U. S. 1, 6 (2013). “At the Amendment’s ‘very core’ stands ‘the right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion.’” Ibid. (quoting Silverman v. United States, 365 U. S. 505, 511 (1961)). To give full practical effect to that right, the Court considers curtilage—“the area ‘immediately surrounding and associated with the home’”—to be “‘part of the home itself for Fourth Amendment purposes.’” Jardines, 569 U. S., at 6 (quoting Oliver v. United States, 466 U. S. 170, 180 (1984)). “The protection afforded the curtilage is essentially a protection of families and personal privacy in an area intimately linked to the home, both physically and psychologically, where privacy expectations are most heightened.” California v. Ciraolo, 476 U. S. 207, 212–213 (1986).

When a law enforcement officer physically intrudes on the curtilage to gather evidence, a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment has occurred. Jardines, 569 U. S., at 11. Such conduct thus is presumptively unreasonable absent a warrant.

B

1

With this background in mind, we turn to the application of these doctrines in the instant case. As an initial matter, we decide whether the part of the driveway where Collins’ motorcycle was parked and subsequently searched is curtilage.

According to photographs in the record, the driveway runs alongside the front lawn and up a few yards past the front perimeter of the house. The top portion of the driveway that sits behind the front perimeter of the house is enclosed on two sides by a brick wall about the height of a car and on a third side by the house. A side door provides direct access between this partially enclosed section of the driveway and the house. A visitor endeavoring to reach the front door of the house would have to walk partway up the driveway, but would turn off before entering the enclosure and instead proceed up a set of steps leading to the front porch. When Officer Rhodes searched the motorcycle, it was parked inside this partially enclosed top portion of the driveway that abuts the house.

[The opinion explained how the curtilage extends around the home and includes that area around the home to which the usual activity of the home extends.] * * *

2

In physically intruding on the curtilage of Collins’ home to search the motorcycle, Officer Rhodes not only invaded Collins’ Fourth Amendment interest in the item searched, i.e., the motorcycle, but also invaded Collins’ Fourth Amendment interest in the curtilage of his home. The question before the Court is whether the automobile exception justifies the invasion of the curtilage.  The answer is no.

  Applying the relevant legal principles to a slightly different factual scenario confirms that this is an easy case. Imagine a motorcycle parked inside the living room of a house, visible through a window to a passerby on the street. Imagine further that an officer has probable cause to believe that the motorcycle was involved in a traffic infraction. Can the officer, acting without a warrant, enter the house to search the motorcycle and confirm whether it is the right one? Surely not.

The reason is that the scope of the automobile exception extends no further than the automobile itself. * * *

The Court already has declined to expand the scope of other exceptions to the warrant requirement to permit warrantless entry into the home. The reasoning behind those decisions applies equally well in this context. For instance, under the plain-view doctrine, “any valid warrantless seizure of incriminating evidence” requires that the officer “have a lawful right of access to the object itself.” Horton v. California, 496 U. S. 128, 136–137 (1990); see also id., at 137, n. 7 (“‘[E]ven where the object is contraband, this Court has repeatedly stated and enforced the basic rule that the police may not enter and make a warrantless seizure’”); G. M. Leasing Corp. v. United States, 429 U. S. 338, 354 (1977) (“It is one thing to seize without a warrant property resting in an open area . . . , and it is quite another thing to effect a warrantless seizure of property . . . situated on private premises to which access is not otherwise available for the seizing officer”). A plain-view seizure thus cannot be justified if it is effectuated “by unlawful trespass.” Soldal v. Cook County, 506 U. S. 56, 66 (1992). Had Officer Rhodes seen illegal drugs through the window of Collins’ house, for example, assuming no other warrant exception applied, he could not have entered the house to seize them without first obtaining a warrant.

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Just as an officer must have a lawful right of access to any contraband he discovers in plain view in order to seize it without a warrant, and just as an officer must have a lawful right of access in order to arrest a person in his home, so, too, an officer must have a lawful right of access to a vehicle in order to search it pursuant to the automobile exception. The automobile exception does not afford the necessary lawful right of access to search a vehicle parked within a home or its curtilage because it does not justify an intrusion on a person’s separate and substantial Fourth Amendment interest in his home and curtilage.

As noted, the rationales underlying the automobile exception are specific to the nature of a vehicle and the ways in which it is distinct from a house. [Reference Omitted.]  The rationales thus take account only of the balance between the intrusion on an individual’s Fourth Amendment interest in his vehicle and the governmental interests in an expedient search of that vehicle; they do not account for the distinct privacy interest in one’s home or curtilage. To allow an officer to rely on the automobile exception to gain entry into a house or its curtilage for the purpose of conducting a vehicle search would unmoor the exception from its justifications, render hollow the core Fourth Amendment protection the Constitution extends to the house and its curtilage, and transform what was meant to be an exception into a tool with far broader application. Indeed, its name alone should make all this clear enough: It is, after all, an exception for automobiles.

Given the centrality of the Fourth Amendment interest in the home and its curtilage and the disconnect between that interest and the justifications behind the automobile exception, we decline Virginia’s invitation to extend the automobile exception to permit a warrantless intrusion on a home or its curtilage.

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IV

For the foregoing reasons, we conclude that the automobile exception does not permit an officer without a warrant to enter a home or its curtilage in order to search a vehicle therein. We leave for resolution on remand whether Officer Rhodes’ warrantless intrusion on the curtilage of Collins’ house may have been reasonable on a different basis, such as the exigent circumstances exception to the warrant requirement. The judgment of the Supreme Court of Virginia is therefore reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.