holding that Jardines “clearly rejected” the notion that officers may “proceed around a house and knock on the back door if they have reason to believe that an individual is inside the house and no one answered the front door”
How later courts described this case
- holding that Jardines “clearly rejected” the notion that officers may “proceed around a house and knock on the back door if they have reason to believe that an individual is inside the house and no one answered the front door”
- explaining that a knock-and-talk “allows an officer without a warrant to enter the curtilage and knock on the front door”
- recognizing exception to warrant requirement for uninhabited property
- “As an unpublished decision, [it] is not precedentially binding under the doctrine of stare decisis, but is considered by us for its persuasive value only.”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
KETHLEDGE, Circuit Judge, dissenting.
I see nothing in the relevant facts or law that would have made obvious to the officers *514 that Watson had a privacy interest in the house. Watson had just told the officers that he neither owned nor lived there. The majority asserts that "[a]t the very least, Watson communicated that he was an overnight guest or social guest[.]" Maj. Op. at 511. But neither of those things were true once Watson left the scene. Nor does Watson identify any case that would have made clear to the officers that Watson retained some privacy interest in the property based on his vague reference to "his keys inside." I therefore respectfully dissent.