Court Opinion

ID: 9493459
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:08:44.574252+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:51.323374
License: Public Domain

DAVID A. NELSON, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I agre,e with the court’s conclusion that there was no error in the determination that the affidavit was sufficient to establish probable cause for the search of the premises described in the warrant. As to this court’s further conclusion that the defendant had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the basement of the duplex, however, it does not seem to me that the existence of such an expectation would render the search of the basement illegal. On the contrary, I believe that this hypothesis, if correct, would clearly establish the legality of the search under the express terms of the warrant.
The warrant, it will be recalled, directed the police to search both the downstairs apartment and the “curtilage.” For Fourth Amendment purposes, courts “have defined the curtilage, as did the common law, by reference to the factors that determine whether an individual reasonably may expect that an area immediately adjacent to the home will remain private.” Oliver v. United States, 466 U.S. 170, 180, 104 S.Ct. 1735, 80 L.Ed.2d 214 (1984). If the defendant in the case at bar reasonably expected that the basement of his dwelling unit would remain private, I am aware of no principled basis for excluding the basement from the curtilage.
As part of the curtilage, the basement was, to borrow a phrase from United States v. Dunn, 480 U.S. 294, 302, 107 S.Ct. 1134, 94 L.Ed.2d 326 (1987), “an adjunct of the house” — and that is precisely how the police treated it. I think they *756were right to do so, and I would therefore affirm the judgment entered by the district court.