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  • Essay / Case Study Florida V. Jardines - 1281

    Among the various places and things protected by the Fourth Amendment, “the house is first among equals.” Florida v. Jardines, 133 S.Ct. 1409, 1414 (2013). For purposes of the Fourth Amendment, protected places and things include the house and its surroundings, which is the area "immediately surrounding and associated with the house." Identifier. When there is no reasonable expectation of privacy, there is no coverage of Fourth Amendment protection. See Katz v. United States, 88 S. Ct. 507 (1967). To determine whether a legitimate expectation of privacy exists, the court must determine whether a person possessed 1) a real (subjective) expectation of privacy in the place or object searched; and 2) if the expectation is objective, one that society recognizesFlorida v. Jardines, 133 S.Ct. 1409 (2013). In Jardines, police officers took a drug-sniffing dog to the defendant's front porch and the dog subsequently gave a positive alert for the presence of narcotics. Identifier. at 2:13 p.m. Following the alert, officers obtained a search warrant and found narcotics inside the defendant's residence. Identifier. The Supreme Court ruled that the officers' use of the drug-sniffing dog to investigate the house and its curtilage constituted a search under the Fourth Amendment. Identifier. to 1417-18. The Court found that the officers physically trespassed on defendant's property when they entered the grounds of defendant's home to collect incriminating evidence. Identifier. First, Reed's entry with his trained drug detection dog does not constitute trespassing. Under Jardines, trespassing occurs when an officer physically enters a property or the perimeter of a home to collect incriminating evidence. Florida v. Jardines, 133 S. Ct. 1409, 1417 (2013). Unlike Jardines, Reed's actions did not constitute trespassing because Reed and the trained narcotics detection dog did not physically enter appellant's apartment or courtyard, but rather entered the shared hallway . Comparing Jardines to the present case, the two are markedly different. A porch attached to a house and a common corridor of an apartment building are in no way similar and are not subject to the same level of constitutional law.