Court Opinion

ID: 9491040
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:02:04.617648+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:28.560383
License: Public Domain

EVANS, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
“Curtilage” is a dated term that relates better to a time when knights in shining armor rescued damsels in distress. It is not a particularly well-suited term for deciding suppression motions alleging violations of the Fourth Amendment in federal criminal cases. It is, nevertheless, the term we use, and I join the majority because I believe the garbage cans, placed as they were for collection outside of the garage on the driveway Red-mon shared with the occupant of the adjoining townhouse, was not within the curtilage of the townhouse unit in which he lived.
’ An area is considered part of the curtilage of a dwelling if it “is so intimately tied to the home itself that it should be placed under the home’s ‘umbrella’ of Fourth Amendment protection.” United States v. Dunn, 480 U.S. 294, 107 S.Ct. 1134, 94 L.Ed.2d 326 (1987). The curtilage is protected because people enjoy a reasonable expectation of privacy in those areas intimately associated with the home in which they live. But it’s simply an unfortunate fact of life that in a modem urban setting — a multi-family apartment building, or ■ as here an 8-unit townhouse complex — the area where one can reasonably expect privacy to prevail is very narrow. In a multi-unit apartment building there may in fact be no curtilage except perhaps in a separate area — like a basement storage locker — subject to one’s exclusive control. In a townhouse complex like Redmon’s the curti-lage is a bit wider. It includes the garage itself and those areas close to the living unit, particularly places where prying eyes can peer into windows. But Redmon’s curtilage does not include the shared concrete driveway outside of his shared garage. When Redmon moved his garbage cans outside of his garage on collection days to his shared driveway, which was less than a first down’s distance from the public sidewalk, he moved them beyond his curtilage. As the cans sat there waiting to be picked up by the garbage collectors, Redmon had no reasonable expectation that their contents would remain undisclosed.