“Curtilage” has been defined by the Court as the general area around a home, including closely associated buildings, structures, etc. The extent of curtilage has been vigorously argued by Ukiah criminal defense lawyers, Lakeport criminal defense lawyers and Eureka criminal defense lawyers. It is an area where the Courts have recognized that a homeowner has a reasonable expectation of privacy. Generally, curtilage is evident from the land that is surrounded by fences, walls or similar structures. For larger properties, at some point the curtilage stops and “open land” begins. The “open land” area is not protected from a warrantless search. Eureka criminal defense lawyers are aware that as of 2008, California Courts have held that for a police officer to enter into the curtilage of a home without a search warrant he/she need facts that would qualify the unauthorized entry under an exigency or emergency exception to a warrant requirement.

Recently, in the case of Sims v. Stanton (2012), the Court ruled that all of the evidence uncovered by a police officer had to be thrown out of court or suppressed because the police officer entered into the “curtilage” when he was investigating a report of a disturbance. This decision is applauded by Mendocino County criminal defense lawyers, Humboldt County criminal defense lawyers and Lake County criminal defense lawyers. The police officer in Sims v. Stanton had no facts tying the defendant to the reported disturbance and did not see any “exigent” circumstances such as someone carrying a weapon, threatening a police officer, etc. Since there were no exigent or emergency circumstances to create an exception to acquiring a warrant, the laws regarding suppression of evidence were enforced.

When a police officer unconstitutionally enters the curtilage of a home he/she does so illegally and, as a result, any evidence she/she uncovers is suppressed. This rule is commonly referred to as the “Fruit of the Poisonous Tree” rule which illustrates the rationale that if the tree is poisonous, the fruit is poisonous or, in these types of circumstances, if the search is unconstitutional then the evidence acquired as a result of the unconstitutional search is deemed to be illegally acquired and, therefore, will be thrown out of court and suppressed. The police are not allowed to use evidence acquired illegally and, theoretically, this rule is designed to encourage police officers to follow the law.

Normally, the Fourth Amendment requires a police officer to have a reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed to justify the search of a person, vehicle, home, etc. One of the exceptions to this “reasonable suspicion” involves what is termed a “regulatory search”. California courts have interpreted the Fish and Game statutes as authorizing a stop of a car occupied by a hunter or fisherman to enforce Fish and Game rules. The United States Supreme Court has held in a number of cases that an administrative or regulatory search or seizure may be conducted without the presence of a reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed. This decision is one that unfortunately, in the opinion of a Santa Rosa criminal defense attorney, a Marin criminal defense attorney, and a Napa criminal defense attorney, deprives citizens of their rights and enlarges the ability of police to intrude upon citizens’ freedom of movement.

The courts have reasoned that without this latitude it would be impossible to enforce Fish and Game laws if a game warden were required to have a “reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed” before stopping hunters and fisherman and demanding to be shown the animals or fish caught or killed. The court has ruled that this intrusion on privacy due to this stop and demand procedure is minimal at best and these stops are limited to people who are voluntarily engaging in the heavily regulated activity of fishing and hunting and these demands to be shown the fish or animals caught or killed is directly related to fishing and hunting.

The only requirement for this type of a stop is that the stopping of the vehicle must be reasonably close in time and to the place where the fishing or hunting took place. If so, the courts have ruled that the encroachment on the hunter or fisherman’s privacy is modest, thereby justifying it. Other decisions by the same courts have limited law enforcement’s right to stop a person or vehicle. Unfortunately, the courts have, for some time now, ruled that weighing the state’s need to regulate Fish and Game rules against the intrusion on the privacy of citizens is a reasonable procedure under the Fourth Amendment.

Santa Rosa criminal defense lawyers, Marin criminal defense lawyers and Napa criminal defense lawyers believe that recent decisions in this regard incorrectly expand law enforcement’s ability to intrude on the privacy of a citizen who is not engaged in any criminal activity. In the recent case of People v. Maikhio (June 2001), the court held that a member of the state’s Fish and Game agency, who reasonably believed that a person has recently been fishing or hunting and who lacks a reasonable suspicion that the person has violated any Fish and Game rules, can still detain the vehicle in which the person is a passenger to demand that the person show all of the fish or game that the person has caught.