Opinion ID: 689991
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The fence.

Text: 16 The DEA Agent and police officer trespassed on Van Damme's land in the middle of the night, walked through Van Damme's forest, and climbed over Van Damme's wire fence, to get to the marijuana growing area they had identified from the air. They stopped at the board fence, which was twelve feet high, and looked through a crack between the boards. The moon was full and the doors were wide open, so they could see the marijuana inside. The exhibits show that the spaces between the boards are in many places wide enough so that daylight shows through, and the doors are the full height and width of the greenhouses. 17 To decide whether land is curtilage or an open field, a court must examine four factors: 18 [T]he 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. 19 United States v. Dunn, 480 U.S. 294, 301, 107 S.Ct. 1134, 1139, 94 L.Ed.2d 326 (1987); United States v. Traynor, 990 F.2d 1153, 1156 (9th Cir.1993). Judge Lovell carefully reviewed the four factors listed in Dunn. He found that the greenhouse compound was over 200 feet from the home. The wire fence surrounding the home and greenhouse compound was a perimeter fence enclosing several acres, not a fence surrounding only the home and curtilage. The board fence surrounding the greenhouse made it a distinct portion of the property quite separate from the residence. The greenhouse compound lacked any indicia of activities commonly associated with domestic life. The cultivation of crops, such as marijuana, is one of those activities that occur in open fields, not an intimate activity of the home. See Oliver v. United States, 466 U.S. 170, 179, 104 S.Ct. 1735, 1742, 80 L.Ed.2d 214 (1984). The officers were not within the curtilage when they saw the marijuana through the fence and greenhouse doors, and neither were the greenhouses. 20 Obviously Van Damme intended to shield his activity in the greenhouses from easy viewing by the public. He was using the greenhouses to commit a felony. Their separation from publicly accessible land and the high board fence leave no doubt about his desire for privacy. Van Damme argues that this demonstrated purpose of maintaining privacy requires that the greenhouses be treated as curtilage. An intent to maintain privacy, however, does not necessarily establish a constitutionally protected area of privacy. 21 Van Damme did not have a constitutionally protected right to maintain privacy in open fields, outside his home and curtilage. The place where the officers stood, outside the fence, was open fields, outside his curtilage. Curtilage is an ancient English law term used to mark off an area outside the walls of the home as being within the geographic area in which theft at night amounts to burglary. Blackstone said, 22 For no distant barn, warehouse, or the like, are under the same privileges, nor looked upon as a man's castle of defense; nor is a breaking open of houses wherein no man resides, and which therefore for the time being are not mansion-houses, attended with the same circumstances of midnight terror.... And if the barn, stable, or warehouse be parcel of the mansionhouse, though not under the same roof or contiguous, a burglary may be committed therein; for the capital house protects and privileges all its branches and appurtenances, if within the curtilage or homestall. 23 IV Blackstone's Commentaries 225 (1769). The protection of houses in the Fourth Amendment extends to curtilage, which means the land immediately surrounding and associated with the home ... to which extends the intimate activity associated with the 'sanctity of a man's home and the privacies of life.'  Oliver, 466 U.S. at 180, 104 S.Ct. at 1742 (citations omitted). Blackstone's reference to which kinds of nighttime thefts cause the same circumstance of midnight terror as an entry into the home gives additional assistance in locating the boundary of curtilage. The greenhouses were fenced off, not just from the public, but also from the residential portion of Van Damme's property, and were entirely separate from the places of intimate activity associated with the home. 24 We do not need to reach the question of whether the interior of the greenhouses constituted open fields. A 1924 decision written by Justice Holmes, which happened to concern an open field, held that [T]he special protection accorded by the Fourth Amendment to the people in their 'persons, houses, papers, and effects,' is not extended to the open fields. The distinction between the latter and the house is as old as the common law. Hester v. United States, 265 U.S. 57, 59, 44 S.Ct. 445, 446, 68 L.Ed. 898 (1924) (citation omitted). The phrase open fields was used in Hester because the case happened to involve open fields, but the reasoning was broader. The doctrine is based upon a literal reading of the Fourth Amendment, which says that the protection against unreasonable searches and seizures extends only to persons, houses, papers, and effects. U.S. Const. amend. IV. Because the Founding Fathers rejected James Madison's proposal to include and their other property in the list of protected areas, an individual may not legitimately demand privacy for activities conducted out of doors in fields, except in the area immediately surrounding the home. Id. 466 U.S. at 176-78, 104 S.Ct. at 1740-41. 25 In 1984, the Supreme Court established the continuing vitality of this doctrine. See Oliver, 466 U.S. at 173, 104 S.Ct. at 1739 (1984). The reasoning does not depend on the openness of the fields, or whether the unprotected area is a field at all. An open field need be neither 'open' nor a 'field.'  Id. at 180, n. 11, 104 S.Ct. at 1742, n. 11. 26 Nevertheless, it is well established that Fourth Amendment protection applies to enclosed places which are not persons, houses, papers, and effects, such as enclosed commercial buildings, Dow Chemical, 476 U.S. at 236, 106 S.Ct. at 1825-26, and a trailer outside the curtilage used as a storage shed, United States v. Santa Maria, 15 F.3d 879 (9th Cir.1994). 27 We do not need to solve the enigma in this case. The unfortunate use of the term open fields in this body of law causes misunderstanding and confusion, and should be replaced by a term which means what is says, such as unprotected area. In this case, the observation was made from open fields, outside the curtilage, and the area observed was outside the curtilage, so under Traynor, 990 F.2d at 1159, the Fourth Amendment did not entitle Van Damme to privacy from the observation. 28