NO. COA13-461

NORTH CAROLINA COURT OF APPEALS

Filed: 18 March 2014

STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA

v. Catawba County

No. 10 CRS 57159

DARIUS CORDALE ALEXANDER,

Defendant.

Appeal by defendant from judgment entered 17 August 2011 by 

Judge H. William Constangy in Catawba County Superior Court. 

Heard in the Court of Appeals 23 September 2013.

Attorney General Roy Cooper, by Special Deputy Attorney 

General Angel E. Gray, for the State. 

Appellate Defender Staples Hughes, by Assistant Appellate

Defender Jon H. Hunt and Assistant Appellate Defender 

Benjamin Dowling-Sendor, for defendant-appellant.

GEER, Judge.

Defendant Darius Cordale Alexander appeals from an order 

denying, in part, his motion to suppress evidence seized during 

a warrantless search of a trailer parked in front of his mobile 

home. On appeal, defendant contends that the challenged search 

and seizure were not reasonable under the plain view doctrine 

because the criminal nature of the items was not immediately 

apparent and the officers did not have legal right of access to 
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the items seized. We hold that the findings of fact support the 

trial court's conclusion that the criminal nature of the items 

was immediately apparent. However, we remand for further 

findings of fact and conclusions of law regarding whether the 

officers had a lawful right of access to the items seized. 

Facts

The State's evidence tended to show the following facts. 

On the morning of 29 October 2010, Officer Stephanie Roberts of 

the Hickory Police Department responded to a reported theft of 

air conditioning copper coil at the Century Furniture Company. 

The maintenance supervisor, Bob Ledford, informed Officer 

Roberts that he had checked on the air conditioning units the 

previous day at around 4:30 p.m., but when he arrived that 

morning, he discovered that approximately 200 pounds of copper 

coil had been stolen.

After taking Mr. Ledford's statement, Officer Roberts

called Mr. Caroll McKinney at McKinney Metals to determine if 

any coil had been sold to him in the previous 24 hours. Mr. 

McKinney called Officer Roberts back at around 3:30 p.m. and 

informed her that coil matching the description and weight of 

the stolen property had been sold to him that day by defendant. 

Mr. McKinney provided Officer Roberts with defendant's name and 

driver's license number, the license plate number of the vehicle 
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defendant used to deliver the coil, and a physical description 

of defendant and his Infiniti SUV. Officer Roberts used 

defendant's driver's license number to locate defendant's 

address and determined that defendant lived in a mobile home in 

Hollar Mobile Home Park in Burke County. 

Hollar Mobile Home Park has about 40 mobile homes on eight 

to 10 acres of land. There are two paved driveways that run 

through the park with mobile homes on either side, forming three 

rows of homes. The homes do not face towards the driveway, but 

instead are situated facing towards and parallel to the main 

road, which runs perpendicular to the paved driveways. In each 

row, there is a grassy area between each mobile home that 

constitutes the front yard of one home and the back yard of 

another. The homes are about 100 feet apart from one another, 

but there are no fences to separate one home from another. 

When facing the park from the main road, defendant's mobile 

home is located in the outer left row of mobile homes. His 

front door faces the main road and is on the far right side of

the mobile home, closest to the paved driveway. The door is 

accessible by walking up three steps to the front porch. The 

grassy area in front of his mobile home is bounded on the left 

by the wooded area bordering the mobile home park, the paved 
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driveway to the right, and, at the front, another empty mobile 

home closer to the main road.

Officer Roberts drove to the mobile home park to question 

defendant, arriving at around 4:14 p.m. She drove down the main 

road and came upon the park on her left. As she approached the 

park and passed the entrance to the first paved driveway on her 

left, she observed an Infiniti SUV matching the description 

given to her by Mr. McKinney with a black male behind the 

steering wheel. She pulled into the second entrance, parked her 

car, and walked back towards defendant's mobile home on foot. 

Defendant's SUV and a wooden tow-behind trailer were parked 

on the far left side of the grassy area in front of defendant's

mobile home. The SUV was parked alongside the mobile home with 

its headlights facing towards the mobile home park driveway. 

The SUV's tailgate was at the edge of the wooded area, and the 

license plate was not visible from the driveway. Next to the 

SUV, towards the empty mobile home and the main road, the 

trailer had also been backed up to the woods so that its license 

plate was not visible. The SUV was approximately 10 to 15 feet 

in front of the mobile home, and the trailer was approximately 

five feet away from the SUV. The trailer had two wheels and was 

no longer attached to a vehicle, so the trailer hitch was 

resting on the ground. This caused the bed of the trailer, 
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which was opened and uncovered, to tilt down in a forward angle 

towards the driveway. 

Officer Roberts approached from the paved driveway on the 

right. When she reached the mobile home the vehicle was no 

longer occupied, so she believed that the individual she saw in 

the SUV had gone inside the mobile home. She walked up to the 

front porch and knocked on the door, but no one answered. When 

she turned around, she noticed the open tow-behind trailer 

parked in the front yard and saw that it contained pieces of air 

conditioning copper coil. She believed that the pieces of coil 

were scrap pieces of the coils that had been stolen and sold to 

Mr. McKinney. 

After knocking on the door and getting no response, Officer 

Roberts walked down from the porch and over towards the wooded 

area to see behind the SUV and the tow-behind trailer to check 

the license plate numbers. The license plate on the SUV matched 

the license plate given to her by Mr. McKinney. 

Officer Roberts radioed for assistance and also called Mr. 

Ledford. She asked Mr. Ledford to bring the ends of the copper 

coil that were left attached to the air conditioning units so 

that they could be compared to the pieces of coil in the 

trailer. While she was waiting for the other officers to 
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arrive, she took photographs of the mobile home, SUV, and 

trailer. 

When Deputy Nathan Smith of the Burke County Sheriff's 

Office arrived, Officer Roberts again knocked on the front door 

of the mobile home while Deputy Smith knocked on the back door. 

Again, they did not get a response. However, as Deputy Smith 

walked to the front of the mobile home, he saw a child peeping 

through a curtain. Claiming concern for the welfare of the 

child, Deputy Smith's partner went to the mobile home park 

office to speak with the park manager about obtaining a key to 

the mobile home. At the officers' request, a maintenance man 

who worked at the park used the landlord's key to allow the 

officers into defendant's mobile home. The defendant and the 

child were found hiding behind a door in one of the bedrooms. 

After determining that the child was okay, the officers 

questioned defendant about the larceny of the air conditioning 

coils. They also found and seized marijuana and a backpack that 

contained gloves, screwdrivers, pliers, and other tools. 

Officer Roberts placed defendant under arrest for larceny and 

breaking and entering. After defendant was placed under arrest, 

Mr. Ledford arrived and was able to identify the coils. Officer 

Roberts collected all of the pieces of coil from the trailer as 

evidence. 
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Defendant was indicted for felony larceny and misdemeanor 

possession of stolen goods. On 11 August 2011, defendant filed 

a motion to suppress all the evidence seized on 29 October 2010, 

including the copper coil in the trailer, and any statements 

made by defendant during the search of his mobile home. On 17 

August 2011, following a hearing, the trial court entered an 

order concluding that the search and seizure of the coils were 

justified by the plain view doctrine, but that the warrantless 

entry into the mobile home was not justified by any exigent 

circumstances, the caretaker exception, or consent of the 

landlord. The trial court granted defendant's motion to 

suppress the evidence seized within the mobile home, but denied

defendant's motion to suppress the coils seized outside the 

mobile home. 

Thereafter, defendant entered a plea of no contest to 

felony possession of stolen goods, and the State dismissed the 

charges of felony larceny and misdemeanor possession of stolen 

goods. The trial court sentenced defendant to a presumptiverange term of 5 to 6 months imprisonment. The court suspended 

the sentence and placed defendant on 30 months of supervised 

probation. 

After the entry of judgment, defendant gave oral notice of 

appeal of the partial denial of his motion to suppress. On 18 
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December 2012, this Court dismissed defendant's appeal for lack 

of jurisdiction for failure to give adequate notice of appeal 

from the trial court's judgment. See State v. Alexander, ___ 

N.C. App. ___, ___ S.E.2d ___, 2012 WL 6590077, 2012 N.C. App. 

LEXIS 1390 (Dec. 18, 2012) (unpublished). On 27 December 2012, 

defendant filed a petition for writ of certiorari to review the 

17 August 2011 judgment, which this Court granted 14 January 

2013. 

Discussion

The sole issue on appeal is whether the trial court erred 

in denying in part defendant's motion to suppress. "The scope 

of review of the denial of a motion to suppress is 'strictly 

limited to determining whether the trial judge's underlying 

findings of fact are supported by competent evidence, in which 

event they are conclusively binding on appeal, and whether those 

factual findings in turn support the judge's ultimate 

conclusions of law.'" State v. Bone, 354 N.C. 1, 7, 550 S.E.2d 

482, 486 (2001) (quoting State v. Cooke, 306 N.C. 132, 134, 291 

S.E.2d 618, 619 (1982)). Unchallenged findings of fact are 

binding on appeal. State v. Lupek, 214 N.C. App. 146, 150, 712 

S.E.2d 915, 918 (2011). The trial court's conclusions of law

are, however, reviewed de novo and "must be legally correct, 
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reflecting a correct application of applicable legal principles 

to the facts found." State v. Fernandez, 346 N.C. 1, 11, 484 

S.E.2d 350, 357 (1997). 

We first note that defendant, the State, and the trial 

court have all focused both on (1) whether Officer Roberts 

conducted a search justified by the plain view doctrine, and (2) 

whether the seizure of the copper coils was permissible under 

that doctrine. The trial court concluded: "Officer Roberts's 

warrantless examination of the contents of the trailer located 

adjacent to defendant's mobile home at [sic] WAS a reasonable 

search, justified by the plain view exception to the warrant 

requirement. Officer Roberts was lawfully present on the front 

porch when she inadvertently saw what she believed to be 

evidence of a crime." The trial court then upheld the seizure: 

"The examination by Officer Roberts of the tow-behind trailer 

located in the front yard and the seizure of the suspected 

stolen property DID NOT violate the defendant's rights under the 

Constitution of the United States of America or the Constitution 

of the State of North Carolina."

However, as the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has 

explained, "[t]he 'plain-view' doctrine provides an exception to 

the warrant requirement for the seizure of property, but it does 

not provide an exception for a search. Viewing an article that 
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is already in plain view does not involve an invasion of privacy 

and, consequently, does not constitute a search implicating the 

Fourth Amendment." United States v. Jackson, 131 F.3d 1105, 

1108 (4th Cir. 1997). See also Horton v. California, 496 U.S. 

128, 134 n.5, 110 L. Ed. 2d 112, 121 n.5, 110 S. Ct. 2301, 2306

n.5 (1990) ("'It is important to distinguish "plain view," . . .

to justify seizure of an object, from an officer's mere 

observation of an item left in plain view. Whereas the latter 

generally involves no Fourth Amendment search, . . . the former 

generally does implicate the Amendment's limitations upon

seizures of personal property.'" (quoting Texas v. Brown, 460 

U.S. 730, 738 n.4, 75 L. Ed. 2d 502, 511 n.4, 103 S. Ct. 1535, 

1541 n.4 (1983) (opinion of Rehnquist, J.))).

We therefore hold, as an initial matter, that the trial 

court erred in applying the plain view doctrine to the question 

whether Officer Roberts performed a lawful search when she 

observed the contents of the trailer from the front porch of the 

mobile home. The plain view doctrine applied only to the 

question whether Officer Roberts' warrantless seizure of the 

copper coils was permissible under the plain view doctrine.

Under the plain view doctrine, a warrantless seizure is

lawful if (1) the officer views the evidence from a place where 

he has legal right to be, (2) it is immediately apparent that 
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the items observed constitute evidence of a crime, are 

contraband, or are subject to seizure based upon probable cause, 

and (3) the officer has a lawful right of access to the evidence 

itself. State v. Nance, 149 N.C. App. 734, 740, 562 S.E.2d 557, 

561-62 (2002). 

With respect to the first element of the plain view 

doctrine, defendant challenges the trial court's finding that 

Officer Roberts could see the coils from the porch -- a location 

where, defendant concedes, Officer Roberts had a legal right to 

be. See State v. Prevette, 43 N.C. App. 450, 455, 259 S.E.2d 

595, 600–01 (1979) (holding officers legally entitled to be on 

front porch of defendant's house for purpose of conducting 

general inquiry or interview). The trial court's finding of 

fact was supported by Officer Roberts' testimony during crossexamination:

Q. . . . You mentioned at some point that 

you knocked on a door eventually, correct? 

A. Yes, sir. . . . When I arrived and I 

seen the Infinity, I walked up on the porch. 

And when I did I could see over into that 

trailer -- into that hitch trailer. But I 

walked up and knocked on the door. 

Q. Okay.

A. And that's when I could see inside that 

hitch trailer. 

Q. Okay. And after you did that did you 

proceed to go over and go behind the 
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automobile to see what tag --

A. To check the plate, yes, sir. 

Q. Okay. Did you go behind the -- You 

also went behind the hitch trailer to see if 

it had a tag on it. 

A. Yes, sir -- 

While defendant argues that this testimony does not 

establish that Officer Roberts could in fact see the coils in 

the trailer, the trial court's finding was a reasonable 

inference drawn from this testimony when considered together 

with Officer Roberts' direct examination. Although defendant's 

interpretation of Officer Roberts' testimony may also be 

reasonable, it is the trial court who "passes upon the 

credibility of the witnesses and the weight to be given their 

testimony and the reasonable inferences to be drawn therefrom. 

If different inferences may be drawn from the evidence, he 

determines which inferences shall be drawn and which shall be 

rejected." Knutton v. Cofield, 273 N.C. 355, 359, 160 S.E.2d 

29, 33 (1968). Because the evidence and reasonable inferences 

drawn from that evidence support the trial court's finding that 

Officer Roberts could see the copper coils from the porch, it is 

binding on appeal. 

Defendant also challenges the sufficiency of the evidence 

to support the trial court's finding that Officer Roberts 
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"inadvertently" looked into the trailer from the front porch. 

This Court, however, has held that "inadvertence is not a 

necessary condition of a lawful search pursuant to the 'plain 

view' doctrine." State v. Church, 110 N.C. App. 569, 575, 430 

S.E.2d 462, 465 (1993) (following Horton).1 Because this finding 

of fact is, therefore, immaterial to the question whether the 

seizure was permissible under the Fourth Amendment, we need not 

address it. 

Regarding the second element of the plain view doctrine, 

defendant argues that the trial court's findings of fact are 

insufficient to support a conclusion that it was "immediately 

apparent" to Officer Roberts that the coils were stolen. "The 

term 'immediately apparent' in a plain view analysis is 

satisfied only 'if the police have probable cause to believe 

that what they have come upon is evidence of criminal conduct.'" 

State v. Graves, 135 N.C. App. 216, 219, 519 S.E.2d 770, 772 

(1999) (quoting State v. Wilson, 112 N.C. App. 777, 782, 437 

S.E.2d 387, 389-90 (1993)). When, as here, the item in plain 

view is considered contraband based solely upon its status as a 

 

1Nevertheless, many cases subsequent to Church have 

continued to articulate the three factor test for the plain view 

doctrine which includes inadvertency. Inadvertence is required 

pursuant to N.C. Gen. Stat. § 15A-253 (2013), which applies to 

items found in plain view during the execution of a valid search 

warrant. Because Officer Roberts did not discover the coil 

while executing a search warrant, N.C. Gen. Stat. § 15A-253 is 

inapplicable to this case. 
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"stolen good," whether its criminal nature is immediately 

apparent to an officer depends upon the interplay between 

extrinsic circumstances known to the officer prior to discovery 

of the item and the officer's observations of the item's 

characteristics. See State v. Connard, 81 N.C. App. 327, 330, 

344 S.E.2d 568, 571 (1986) ("Stolen goods . . . do not qualify 

automatically as contraband, but generally are innocuous except 

for the extrinsic circumstance that they have been stolen."). 

This Court has held that it was immediately apparent that 

an item in plain view was evidence of a crime when the officer 

viewed an item that matched the description of an item he knew 

to be stolen. See, e.g., State v. Haymond, 203 N.C. App. 151, 

161, 691 S.E.2d 108, 118 (2010) (immediately apparent microwave, 

refrigerator, and dishwasher stolen when officer immediately 

recognized the appliances as those from break-in he was 

investigating based on officer's recollection of what stolen 

items looked like); State v. Weakley, 176 N.C. App. 642, 649, 

627 S.E.2d 315, 320 (2006) (immediately apparent shower curtain 

contraband when curtain matched pictures of stolen curtain 

officer had seen).

We find that the circumstances of this case are analogous 

to those in State v. Bembery, 33 N.C. App. 31, 234 S.E.2d 33

(1977). In Bembery, a car dealer discovered that someone had 
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stolen tires from a truck on his lot and provided a description 

of the stolen tires, including the type and size, to the county 

sheriff, who relayed the information to the sheriff in a 

neighboring county. Id. at 32, 234 S.E.2d at 34. Four days 

later, the sheriff in the neighboring county received a call 

from a reliable informant that two of the stolen tires were in 

the possession of the defendant and that the defendant was at a 

friend's house. Id. The sheriff drove to the house about 40 

minutes later, where he found the defendant getting ready to put 

tires on his car. Id. The tires were in plain view and matched 

the description given by the car dealer. Id. The Court held 

that "[i]n these circumstances, the seizure of the tires for the 

purpose of taking them to [the car dealer] for identification 

was reasonable." Id. at 36, 234 S.E.2d at 37.

Here, the trial court's findings of fact establish that

Officer Roberts was investigating a recent theft of air 

conditioning copper coil and was given the description and 

weight of the stolen coil. Officer Roberts, like the officer in 

Bembery, received reliable information that the defendant was 

recently in possession of the stolen goods -- a local metal 

recycler informed Officer Roberts that coil matching the 

description and weight of the stolen coil had been sold to the 

recycler by defendant earlier that day. The metal recycler 
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provided Officer Roberts with defendant's name and driver's 

license number, the license plate number of the vehicle used to 

deliver the coil, and a physical description of defendant and 

his vehicle. 

Officer Roberts used the information from the metal 

recycler to locate defendant's residence, where she saw a parked 

vehicle matching the description given to her by the metal 

recycler with a black male behind the steering wheel. From the 

front porch of defendant's mobile home, Officer Roberts noticed 

air conditioning copper coil in the open-tow trailer parked next 

to defendant's SUV. As in Haymond, Weakley, and Bembery, the 

items viewed by Officer Roberts matched the description of goods 

she knew to be stolen.2 Furthermore, the additional information 

Officer Roberts had gathered from her investigation after 

speaking to the metal recycler bolstered her belief that the 

items in the trailer were stolen. These findings sufficiently 

support the conclusion that it was immediately apparent to 

Officer Roberts that the coils were evidence of a crime. 

 

2Although the trial court's finding that Officer Roberts 

believed the coils to be evidence of a crime is found in 

conclusion of law #1, we treat it as a finding of fact. See

Gainey v. N.C. Dep't of Justice, 121 N.C. App. 253, 257 n.1, 465 

S.E.2d 36, 40 n.1 (1996) ("Although denominated as a conclusion 

of law, we treat this conclusion as a finding of fact because 

its determination does not involve the application of legal 

principles.")
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Nevertheless, defendant argues that Officer Roberts merely 

suspected that the coils were stolen, but did not have the level 

of certainty required to rise to the level of probable cause. 

Defendant points to the trial court's finding that Officer 

Roberts called the factory manager, Mr. Ledford, to ask him to 

come and identify the pieces of scrap metal, and analogizes 

these facts to cases in which the criminal nature of an item 

seized by an officer was not apparent until the officer further 

manipulated the item. See State v. Sapatch, 108 N.C. App. 321,

325, 423 S.E.2d 510, 513 (1992) (criminal nature of closed film 

canisters not apparent until officer opened canisters and 

discovered rocks of cocaine); Graves, 135 N.C. App. at 220, 519 

S.E.2d at 773 (officer did not have probable cause to believe 

brown paper wads were evidence of crime when he did not know 

items were contraband until after he unfolded them); State v. 

Carter, 200 N.C. App. 47, 55, 682 S.E.2d 416, 422 (2009) 

(criminal nature of scraps of paper seized by officer not 

apparent until pieced back together and read). 

In contrast to this case, in Sapatch, Graves, and Carter, 

the criminal nature of the item was not immediately apparent

because the contraband was, literally, out of sight. All that 

could be seen at first were innocuous items -- a film canister, 

wads of brown paper, and a torn-up piece of paper. The plain 
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view doctrine did not apply because the contraband -- the 

cocaine inside the canister, the crack pipe inside the wads of 

brown paper, and the incriminating words on the torn up sheets 

of paper -- were, simply, not in plain view. Here, however, the 

items that Officer Roberts saw -- the coils -- constituted the 

contraband itself and was plainly and completely visible at 

first glance without any physical manipulation. Officer Roberts 

possessed sufficient information at the time she saw the coils 

in the trailer to have probable cause to believe that the coils 

were stolen. Mr. Ledford merely confirmed that the coils were, 

in fact, the stolen coils. Accordingly, we conclude that the 

trial court's findings of fact are sufficient to support the 

conclusion that the criminal nature of the coils was immediately 

apparent to Officer Roberts.

Turning to the final element -- whether Officer Roberts had 

a lawful right of access to the trailer in which the coils were 

found -- defendant argues that the trial court did not make the 

findings necessary to establish this element. We agree. 

This Court has previously emphasized that a determination 

that contraband was in plain view is not sufficient to support a 

warrantless seizure of the contraband: 

What a person knowingly exposes to the 

public, even in his own home or office, is 

not a subject of Fourth Amendment 

protection. Thus, when officers are in a 
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public place or some other area, such as an 

open field, that is not protected by the 

Fourth Amendment, knowledge that they gain 

from their plain-view observations does not 

constitute a search under the Fourth 

Amendment. Whether such plain-view 

observations can justify a warrantless 

seizure, however, is a separate question. 

If the boundaries of the Fourth Amendment 

were defined exclusively by rights of 

privacy, "plain view" seizures would not 

implicate that constitutional provision at 

all. Yet, far from being automatically 

upheld, "plain view" seizures have been 

scrupulously subjected to Fourth Amendment 

inquiry. That is because, the absence of a 

privacy interest notwithstanding, [a] 

seizure . . . obviously invade[s] the 

owner's possessory interest. 

Nance, 149 N.C. App. at 739, 562 S.E.2d at 561 (internal 

citations and quotation marks omitted). 

It is well settled that officers have a lawful right of 

access to items located in a public place. See Payton v. New 

York, 445 U.S. 573, 587, 63 L. Ed. 2d 639, 651, 100 S. Ct. 1371, 

1380 (1980) ("objects such as weapons or contraband found in a 

public place may be seized by the police without a warrant"). 

The first question to address in establishing whether an officer 

had a lawful right of access to an object, therefore, is whether 

the object was located in a public place or on private property. 

In Nance, this Court held that an open field leased by the 

defendant which was outside of the curtilage of his home was not 

a public place, noting that "[t]he fact that defendant's 
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property included open fields does not transform private 

property into public land." 149 N.C. App. at 742, 562 S.E.2d at 

563.

If the seized item is not located in a public place, the 

officers may nevertheless have a lawful right of access to the 

item to justify its seizure if they entered the private property 

by consent, pursuant to a warrant, or under exigent 

circumstances. Id. at 741, 744, 562 S.E.2d at 562, 564 

(concluding officers did not have a lawful right of access to 

seize malnourished horses on private property where the officers 

"had neither consent nor a warrant authorizing their entry onto 

defendant's property" and where "exigent circumstances did not 

exist"). 

Nance also rejected the argument that officers have lawful 

access to seize items on private property whenever they "are 

conducting [a] 'legitimate law enforcement function[].'" Id. at 

742, 562 S.E.2d at 563. Nance acknowledged that it is not a 

trespass for an officer to enter private property "'for the 

purpose of a general inquiry or interview.'" Id. (quoting

Prevette, 43 N.C. App. at 455, 259 S.E.2d at 599-600). However, 

Nance clarified that this rule does not "stand[] for the 

proposition that law enforcement officers may enter private 
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property without a warrant and seize evidence of a crime." Id. 

(emphasis added). Nance explained:

If the position advanced by the State were 

correct, law enforcement officers could 

enter onto private property and seize 

evidence of criminal activity without a 

warrant whenever they had probable cause to 

suspect that such activity was taking place. 

Such a position directly contradicts 

repeated admonitions by the United States 

Supreme Court that although

"[t]he seizure of property in 

plain view involves no invasion of 

privacy and is presumptively 

reasonable, assuming that there is 

probable cause to associate the 

property with criminal activity[,]

[a] different situation is 

presented . . . when the property 

in open view is situated on 

private premises to which access 

is not otherwise available for the 

seizing officer." 

Id. at 742-43, 562 S.E.2d at 563 (quoting Texas, 460 U.S. at 

738, 75 L. Ed. 2d at 511, 103 S. Ct. at 1541). This Court, 

relying on Nance, has subsequently confirmed that, absent 

exigent circumstances, initiating a valid "knock and talk" does 

not give officers a lawful right of access to walk across the 

curtilage of a defendant's home to seize contraband in plain 

view. State v. Grice, ___ N.C. App. ___, ___, 735 S.E.2d 354, 

358 (2012), disc. review allowed, ___ N.C. ___, 743 S.E.2d 179 

(2013). 
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Here, the trial court failed to make any findings regarding 

whether the officers had legal right of access to the coils in 

the trailer. The trial court did not address whether the 

trailer was located on private property leased by defendant, 

private property owned by the mobile home park, or public 

property. It also did not make any findings regarding whether, 

assuming that the trailer was located on private property, the 

officers had legal right of access either by consent or due to 

exigent circumstances. We, therefore, remand for further 

findings of fact and conclusions of law regarding that issue. 

We leave it to the court's discretion whether to consider 

additional evidence.3

Reversed and remanded.

Chief Judge MARTIN and Judge STROUD concur.

 

3We find no merit to the State's argument that the seizure 

of the coils could alternatively be justified pursuant to a 

search incident to lawful arrest. Under the search incident to 

arrest warrant requirement exception, "'if the search is 

incident to a lawful arrest, an officer may conduct a 

warrantless search of the arrestee's person and the area within 

the arrestee's immediate control.'" Carter, 200 N.C. App. at

51, 682 S.E.2d at 419 (quoting State v. Logner, 148 N.C. App. 

135, 139, 557 S.E.2d 191, 194 (2001)). The trial court made no 

findings of fact that would support the State's contention, and 

the record contains no evidence that would support the necessary 

findings.