When the government physically enters someone’s home, it has conducted a Fourth Amendment “search.” Furthermore, the home is considered to be the most important location free from unreasonable government interference, and the curtilage surrounding the home is also considered part of the home for Fourth Amendment purposes.
The police violated the Fourth Amendment in this case by entering the home’s curtilage to conduct a search. The drug-sniffing dog’s presence on the property constituted a “search” under the Fourth Amendment.
There is no need to evaluate whether the police breached Jardines’ expectation of privacy, given the clarity of the trespass justification. Additionally, the police actions have been further unjustifiably supported by the use of a dog, which in this case, acted as a search device. Said dog possessed the ability to influence the wronged party beyond those that would be standard for a regular human.
Ordinary persons, including police officers, have limited authorization to stroll on a person’s walkway and to their front door. Outside of extraordinary circumstances, which were not present in this case, there is no justification for trespassing there.
A reasonable person would anticipate scents to originate from a house and be detectable outside of it, so there is no reasonable expectation of privacy concern. A reasonable person would also be unable to distinguish which odors are solely perceptible by dogs and not by humans. Thus, an additional point can be made about the dog posing as an additional threat to a person’s right to privacy.