Rendon, Michael Eric, PD-0013-15

Background

Police brought a trained narcotics detection dog (Baco) up stairs and across the landing directly to Rendon’s apartment front-door threshold and had the dog sniff the door.
The dog alerted; the alert was the sole basis for a warrant to search Rendon’s apartment.
Witness testimony placed the dog at Rendon’s front door for several minutes before the alert.
The court considered whether this conduct constituted a physical intrusion into the apartment’s curtilage under Florida v. Jardines.
The concurrence emphasizes that an apartment’s threshold/front door is part of the dwelling’s curtilage and thus entitled to the same Fourth Amendment protections as a house.

Issues

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Whether bringing a drug-detection dog to an apartment door is a physical intrusion into curtilage under Jardines	The dog sniff at the threshold was a physical intrusion onto private curtilage warranting Fourth Amendment protection	Officers only investigated odors emanating from outside; no physical entry into the home occurred	Court agreed it was an intrusion into the apartment’s curtilage under Jardines
Whether an apartment’s front-door threshold counts as curtilage	Threshold/front door is part of the apartment and thus curtilage like a house’s threshold	The area is a common or exterior area not entitled to house-level protection	Court held the apartment threshold is curtilage and protected
Whether the dog sniff implicated reasonable expectation of privacy under Katz	The use of a trained dog to discern interior narcotics intrudes on home privacy expectations	The sniff detected only exterior odors and was non-intrusive surveillance	Concurrence notes no need to decide Katz but signals that Katz concerns would support suppression
Whether a trained detection dog is a “sense-enhancing technology” under Kyllo	A drug-detection dog can reveal interior details not otherwise knowable and is not in general public use, making it like Kyllo’s thermal device	A dog’s sniff is a passive detection of exterior odor, not technological surveillance of the interior	Concurrence analogizes Baco to Kyllo’s device and suggests the sniff could be a search under Kyllo principles

Key Cases Cited

Florida v. Jardines, 133 S. Ct. 1409 (2013) (dog sniff at front door implicated curtilage and was a search)
Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27 (2001) (use of sense-enhancing technology to obtain interior details of home can be a search)
Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573 (1980) (Fourth Amendment draws a firm line at the entrance to the home)
United States v. Santana, 427 U.S. 38 (1976) (threshold of one’s dwelling is private under common law)
Silverman v. United States, 365 U.S. 505 (1961) (physical intrusion doctrine informing search analysis)
Minnesota v. Carter, 525 U.S. 83 (1998) (home receives special Fourth Amendment protection)
Ohio v. Robinette, 519 U.S. 33 (1996) (discusses scope of Fourth Amendment protections)