The plain view doctrine is a further exception to the warrant requirement. The doctrine outlines three requirements for law enforcement to validly seize an item without a warrant. “First, the police officer must lawfully make an ‘initial intrusion’ or otherwise properly be in a position from which he can view a particular area.” Any item the officer sees from a place of lawful access will have been viewed from a lawful vantage point. Second, the item must possess some quality to make it immediately apparent to the officer that she may seize it. Generally, contraband is readily identifiable. However, even readily identifiable contraband may not be seized under the plain view doctrine unless the initial intrusion onto the property is lawful.
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Jardines illustrates the shifting landscape of Fourth Amendment analysis. In Jardines, the Supreme Court held that the use of a police drug-sniffing dog on the front porch of a house was an unlawful search because the property was protected by the Fourth Amendment. Jardines specified that only a limited scope of conduct is invited by the simple action of “hanging a knocker.” Actions that deviate meaningfully from this protocol (i.e., approaching the front door, knocking, and waiting briefly) or that are not “customary, usual, reasonable, respectful, ordinary, typical, [or] nonalarming” will exceed the scope of the implied license and thus violate the homeowner’s Fourth Amendment …show more content…
This is unsurprising because United States v. Dunn left the subjective expectation of privacy prong of the analysis largely impotent. In Dunn, even significant efforts and clear demonstrations of an intent to establish privacy did not invalidate the search. The Dunn Court found that the defendant had not established a reasonable expectation of privacy in the area surrounding his barn even though officers had to cross a perimeter fence, multiple barbed wire fences, and a wooden fence in order to reach the barn. Justice Brennan correctly pointed out in his dissent that if Katz’s expectation of privacy test were correctly applied, the Court would have found that the defendant expected a barn thus barricaded to be private and that society would agree that within such a fortress one could reasonably expect privacy. However, because the majority employed a property-based analysis, the fact that the barn was not sufficiently connected to the home and curtilage meant that it did not enjoy the privacy protections that modern property rights analysis reserves largely for the home. Jardines continued this trend by focusing on implied licenses, a property rights concept, though admittedly one intimately linked to society’s expectations of privacy. That the North Carolina Supreme Court followed in the footsteps of the Dunn and Jardines is evident from the
Jardines illustrates the shifting landscape of Fourth Amendment analysis. In Jardines, the Supreme Court held that the use of a police drug-sniffing dog on the front porch of a house was an unlawful search because the property was protected by the Fourth Amendment. Jardines specified that only a limited scope of conduct is invited by the simple action of “hanging a knocker.” Actions that deviate meaningfully from this protocol (i.e., approaching the front door, knocking, and waiting briefly) or that are not “customary, usual, reasonable, respectful, ordinary, typical, [or] nonalarming” will exceed the scope of the implied license and thus violate the homeowner’s Fourth Amendment …show more content…
This is unsurprising because United States v. Dunn left the subjective expectation of privacy prong of the analysis largely impotent. In Dunn, even significant efforts and clear demonstrations of an intent to establish privacy did not invalidate the search. The Dunn Court found that the defendant had not established a reasonable expectation of privacy in the area surrounding his barn even though officers had to cross a perimeter fence, multiple barbed wire fences, and a wooden fence in order to reach the barn. Justice Brennan correctly pointed out in his dissent that if Katz’s expectation of privacy test were correctly applied, the Court would have found that the defendant expected a barn thus barricaded to be private and that society would agree that within such a fortress one could reasonably expect privacy. However, because the majority employed a property-based analysis, the fact that the barn was not sufficiently connected to the home and curtilage meant that it did not enjoy the privacy protections that modern property rights analysis reserves largely for the home. Jardines continued this trend by focusing on implied licenses, a property rights concept, though admittedly one intimately linked to society’s expectations of privacy. That the North Carolina Supreme Court followed in the footsteps of the Dunn and Jardines is evident from the