Opinion ID: 1772145
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: did the police officers trespass on the appellant's land in order to gain access to the trailer?

Text: Under this assignment of error Waldrop maintains that the law enforcement officers illegally trespassed on his land by crossing it in order to search the trailer. During the motion to suppress, the evidence showed that Mary Lube was in possession of a deed of a conveyance for real estate describing 1.2 acres of land in Leake County, on which the trailer rested. The grantor of the deed was one George Busby; the grantee was the appellant. The date of execution for the deed was August 29, 1984. However, the deed was unrecorded until November 14, 1984. Mary Lube was in possession of the deed while she was at the sheriff's office; the description in the deed was used to describe the premises for the consent to search. No testimony was presented to show that the deed had ever been delivered to the appellant or that he had ever accepted it. When there is no delivery of a deed to the grantee, no title passes to him. Carothers v. Carothers Estate, 227 Miss. 659, 662, 86 So.2d 855, 856 (1956). Additionally, if there is no acceptance of the deed by the grantee, no title passes to him. See Mississippi State Highway Commission v. Sanders, 269 So.2d 350, 351 (Miss. 1972). Thus, an argument can be made that the appellant has no standing to challenge the presence of the police officers on the property on which the mobile home rested. Assuming once again that the appellant does have standing to address this issue, his claim fails anyway. Waldrop maintains that since the property on which the mobile home rested belonged to him, the officers trespassed on his land in order to reach the trailer to search it. His claim apparently is that this trespass renders the fruits of the search invalid. This Court disagrees. Legal commentators have written that police officers do have rights of access to certain portions of private property. It is not objectionable for an officer to come upon that part of the property which `has been open to public common use.' The route which any visitor to a residence would use is not private in the Fourth Amendment sense, and thus if police take that route `for the purpose of making a general inquiry' or for some other legitimate reason, they are `free to keep their eyes open,' and thus it is permissible for them to look into a garage or similar structure from that location. 1 W. Lafave, Search and Seizure, § 2.3 p. 318 (1978). This same commentator continues in a similar vein: Thus, when the police come on to private property to conduct an investigation or for some other legitimate purpose and restrict their movements to places visitors could be expected to go (e.g., walkways, driveways, porches), observations made from such vantage points are not covered by the Fourth Amendment. Id. at 323. See also U.S. v. Clancy, 285 F. Supp. 98, 99 (S.D.Miss. 1968); People v. Houze, 387 N.W.2d 807, 811, fn. 1 (Mich. 1986). Thus, it would appear that police officers are specifically allowed the right of ingress and egress onto private property, particularly under the circumstances we have in this case i.e., where consent to search the trailer in question has been given by the owner. For this reason, this Court is of the opinion that there is no merit to this assignment of error.