Opinion ID: 1525226
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Entry onto the Land

Text: Doering contends that because he made his home in the bus, and because the police came within the curtilage of his home without his permission, any search or seizure that followed was in violation of the Fourth Amendment. He is wrong for several reasons. First, as we shall discuss more fully in Part II-B, we find that under all the circumstances of this case the bus was properly treated as a vehicle for purposes of the Fourth Amendment, and thus it had no curtilage. Second, even assuming that the bus had sufficient characteristics of a residence to justify consideration of the curtilage concept, [4] there was no definable curtilage in this case. The bus was on, and at the terminus of, an unpaved road that traversed the B & B Construction Company lot. There was no enclosure of any kind, nor any other physical characteristics that could signal the existence of a discrete area contiguous to the bus and reserved for adjunct residential use. Doering seems to suggest that the entire B & B lot must be treated as curtilage to the bus, but offers neither legal nor factual justification for that rather extraordinary proposition. Finally, even if we assume that Doering was within the protected curtilage when the police approached, we find no violation of Fourth Amendment protections. The police entered the property by way of a private road from a public street, in the course of a legitimate investigation of a serious crime. They encountered no obstacles or warnings as they entered, and under these circumstances we find that they had a right to be there. As the Oregon Court of Appeals said in State v. Corbett, 15 Or. App. 470, 516 P.2d 487, 490 (1983), [c]riminal investigation is as legitimate a societal purpose as is census taking or mail delivery. See also Brown v. State, 75 Md. App. 22, 540 A.2d 143 (1988). See generally 1 LaFave, Search and Seizure, § 2.3(f) (1987). The concept of a reasonable expectation of privacy in a particular place is not simplistically singular. It involves, instead, a bundle of privacy interests. One who closes the door to a glass telephone booth may have a reasonable expectation of privacy as to what he is about to say, but no reasonable expectation that the number he dials may not be seen by a casual observer outside the booth. Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967). Similarly, one may have a legitimate expectation that police officers will not conduct a warrantless intrusive search of the curtilage to his home, but have no reasonable expectation that police officers will not simply enter a portion of that curtilage in the course of an investigation. Doering enjoyed no constitutionally reasonable expectation that police officers would be excluded from the place where they confronted him. B