Opinion ID: 199768
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Dunn Analysis

Text: 22 We thus proceed to consider whether Milligan unlawfully stood within the curtilage of appellants' home when he detected the smell of marijuana. We are given an unusual combination of specific and general guidance in United States v. Dunn, 480 U.S. 294 (1987). 23 In Dunn, the Court spelled out four specific factors to be addressed: the proximity of the area claimed to be curtilage to the home, whether the area is included within an enclosure surrounding the home, the nature of the uses to which the area is put, and the steps taken by the resident to protect the area from observation by people passing by. Id. at 301. Then, however, the Court cautioned that these factors are useful only to the extent they shed light on the centrally relevant consideration -- whether the area in question is so intimately tied to the home itself that it should be placed under the home's 'umbrella' of Fourth Amendment protection. Id. Therefore, although we defer to findings regarding specific events, conditions, and structures, our basic issue is whether this central legal standard has been met. 24 We first must dispose of the government's contention that there is a simple answer to our problem, short of getting into the curtilage issue. The government would have us rule that Milligan's presence in a driveway, near a utility pole bearing a meter, vitiates any expectation of privacy. Indeed, at oral argument the government argued that if Milligan had only kept walking on the driveway, he could have come very close to the camp with no danger of violating any curtilage. 25 On scrutiny, the driveway cases cited from this circuit and others do not stand for the proposition urged by the government, that there is no Fourth Amendment protection in driveways. In United States v. Roccio, 981 F.2d 587, 591 (1st Cir. 1992), we upheld the seizure by IRS agents of a vehicle that was parked on an unobstructed driveway and thus was easily visible from the street. We noted our prior conclusion that there is no expectation of privacy in a driveway that is exposed to the public, id., citing United States v. Hensel, 699 F.2d 18, 32-33 (1st Cir. 1983), which held that a license plate number taken from an automobile visible to occasional passersby was admissible evidence. Here, by contrast, the significant portion of the driveway was far from public view. 26 As for the relevance of a meter on a pole, signifying an occasional visit by a meter reader, homeowners throughout the country would be astonished to learn that they had abandoned all curtilage protection by allowing meters to be affixed to the sides of their houses. Dunn's requirement that a resident make efforts to avoid observation by people passing by, 480 U.S. at 301, surely does not require efforts to insure total insulation at all times. Thus, neither the driveway line of cases nor the presence of the utility meter preempts our exploration of the curtilage factors. 27 Proximity. The magistrate judge ruled that a distance of eighty-two feet between the camp and the spot where Milligan smelled the marijuana was not determinative. She did comment that the presence of the pole within the clearing and Milligan's proximity to it, as well as the likelihood of limited intrusions by unannounced visitors, weighed somewhat in favor of the government. As the government has pointed out, there are cases where distances under eighty-two feet have been held not to be within the curtilage and other cases where greater distances have been held to be within it. 28 We, too, find no decisive help in the 82-foot distance from the camp. We do note, however, the absence of any indications of a boundary closer to the camp. And we are mindful of Judge Friendly's observation in United States v. Arboleda, 633 F.2d 985, 992 (2d Cir. 1980) (quoting Commonwealth v. Thomas, 358 Mass. 771, 267 N.E.2d 489, 491 (1971)): 'In a modern urban multifamily apartment house, the area within the curtilage is necessarily much more limited than in the case of a rural dwelling subject to one owner's control.' 29 Enclosure. The magistrate judge reasoned that there were no artificial enclosures that might assist the curtilage analysis, and that although wooded areas might at some points around the property delineate the outer limits of curtilage, the tree line is not so close to the camp at the head of the driveway as to mark that limit for one entering the clearing via the driveway. This seems to us another way of commenting on proximity. Artificial enclosures for most homes, as the Dunn Court observed, will be clearly marked to define the area around the home to which the activity of home life extends, 480 U.S. at 302 (quoting Oliver v. United States, 466 U.S. 170, 182 n.12 (1984)). But in this case, the private interests of the inhabitants extended throughout the clearing, with no reason for internal demarcation. Both the Second Circuit in United States v. Reilly, 76 F.3d 1271, 1278 (2d Cir. 1996), 4 and the Sixth Circuit in Daughenbaugh v. City of Tiffin, 150 F.3d 594, 599 (6th Cir. 1998), have embraced the language in Williams v. Garrett, 722 F. Supp. 254, 260-61 (W.D. Va. 1989): 30 [R]eading the word enclosure in Dunn to require an artificial barrier seems unduly narrow. The boxwood hedge and the heavy woods created a natural enclosure around the home and yard; requiring a person to expend resources and sacrifice aesthetics by building a fence in order to obtain protection from unreasonable searches is not required by the constitution. 31 In short, as to this factor, we think the magistrate judge placed too much emphasis on the need for artificial enclosures in a fairly small clearing, already enclosed by forest, where the home-related uses did not require such enclosures. 32 Use. The magistrate judge gave short shrift to both use of the property and the steps taken to protect the area from observation. The decision noted that there was no objective basis for Agent Milligan to conclude that the Defendants used the location in which he stood for the intimate activities of the home. The Court in Dunn made the converse observation that [i]t is especially significant that the law enforcement officials possessed objective data indicating that the barn was not being used for intimate activities of the home. 480 U.S. at 302. On this point, Justice Scalia parted company with the majority, saying that actual use, not law enforcement officials' knowledge, was the significant fact. Id. at 305. The Reilly court opined that this reference in Dunn did not alter the court's statement that actual use was the relevant factor, but rather was directed to situations in which officers' perceptions coincided with actual use. See 76 F.3d at 1278. 33 The government tries to take advantage of the Dunn reference to objective data of use by pointing out that illegal activity was suggested by the objective evidence possessed by Milligan of power consumption, the fictitious existence of Ian Fabrications, the construction of a large building with no windows, water, or sewage, the absence of signs of commercial activity, and the evasive or confrontational nature of dealings with occupants. All of these indicia, however, related to use of the storage building, not the clearing adjacent to the appellants' living quarters. 34 Whatever may be the proper reach of the reference to evidence of illegal activity, we are not willing to expand it to require that, to invoke curtilage protection, there must be objective evidence of intimate uses possessed by officers. Such would totally eviscerate the protection, making it depend on the exigencies of night or day, rain or shine, and winter or summer. It would turn the concept upside down, presuming the absence of curtilage until and unless the contrary appears. The circuit court opinions of which we are aware have not gone beyond objective evidence of non-intimate use of the property. See, e.g., Reilly, 76 F.3d at 1278-79; United States v. Depew, 8 F.3d 1424, 1427 (9th Cir. 1993), overruled on other grounds by Johnson, 256 F.3d at 911-914; United States v. Swepston, 987 F.2d 1510, 1515 (10th Cir. 1993). 35 On this factor we therefore disagree with the approach taken by the magistrate judge. The evidence of personal, even intimate use of the clearing, was ample and not restricted to any specific area. 36 Steps Taken to Protect from Observation. The magistrate judge addressed this factor summarily, observing that while defendants obviously desired to conceal their illegal activity, it was unreasonable for them to expect that no visitors would ever wander up the driveway or through the woods to stand within the perimeter of the clearing or in the vicinity of the utility pole. 37 Our task is to look at the steps taken by the resident to protect the area from observation by people passing by. Dunn, 480 U.S. at 301. The facts we have summarized concerning the location of the property, the bend in the long driveway, the surrounding woodland, and the efforts of the inhabitants to discourage mail delivery and visits from neighbors and officials all seem to have created a locus as free from observation by passersby as one could conceive. 38 We think current case law supports our judgment that this fourth Dunn factor weighs in favor of defendants. In United States v. Jenkins, 124 F.3d 768, 773 (6th Cir. 1997), the Sixth Circuit considered a back yard that was partly shielded from the road by defendants' house and backed up by a wooded field, and held that these protections were sufficient to prevent observation from the road or undesired public viewing of the backyard. The court said: 39 It is also important to remember that defendants live in a remote and sparsely populated rural area where they would have had no particular reason to believe that they needed to construct a high impenetrable fence around the backyard in order to ensure their privacy. 40 Id.; see also Depew, 8 F.3d at 1428. 41 While we have registered disagreement with the district court on several of the Dunn factors, we rest our decision on this issue of curtilage on the overall centrally relevant consideration -- whether the area in question is so intimately tied to the home itself that it should be placed under the home's 'umbrella' of Fourth Amendment protection. 480 U.S. at 301. Our overview is of a 17-acre wooded tract in a remote rural area, with a residence and clearing occupying less than one half acre. This equates to a not very large island of something under 21,780 square feet or, say, 30-by-70 yards, far from a road, neighbors, or passersby. The claimed private uses of the island are not unusual in such circumstances. A rational basis for segregating part of the clearing from the remainder as curtilage is not apparent to us. We therefore hold that Agent Milligan was within the curtilage of appellants' residence when he smelled the odor of marijuana.