City of Neb. v. Meints
| Decision Date | 05 December 2014 |
| Docket Number | Nos. S-12-1083 through S-12-1092,s. S-12-1083 through S-12-1092 |
| Citation | 856 N.W.2d 410 |
| Parties | City of Beatrice, State of Nebraska, appellee, v. Daniel A. Meints, appellant. |
| Court | Nebraska Supreme Court |
Terry K. Barber, of Barber & Barber, P.C., L.L.O., for appellant.
Gregory A. Butcher, Beatrice City Attorney, for appellee.
Jon Bruning, Attorney General, and James D. Smith for amicus curiae State of Nebraska.
Wright, Connolly, Stephan, McCormack, Miller–Lerman, and Cassel, JJ.
1. Constitutional Law: Search and Seizure: Motions to Suppress: Appeal and Error. In reviewing a trial court's ruling on a motion to suppress evidence based on a claimed violation of the Fourth Amendment, an appellate court applies a two-part standard of review. An appellate court reviews the trial court's findings of historical facts for clear error. But whether those facts trigger or violate Fourth Amendment protections is a question of law that an appellate court independently reviews.
2. Search and Seizure. Searches conducted outside the judicial process, without prior approval by judge or magistrate, are per se unreasonable.
3. Constitutional Law: Search Warrants: Property. Probable cause, standing alone, is not an exception to the search warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment as applied to real property.
4. Constitutional Law: Search and Seizure. A “search” under the Fourth Amendment occurs if a legitimate expectation of privacy is infringed.
5. Constitutional Law: Search and Seizure. A reasonable expectation of privacy is one with a source outside the Fourth Amendment, by reference either to concepts of real or personal property law or to understandings that society recognizes and permits.
6. Constitutional Law: Search and Seizure. A “search” under the Fourth Amendment occurs if the government gains evidence by physically intruding on constitutionally protected areas.
7. Constitutional Law: Search and Seizure. No “search” occurs under either the reasonable expectation of privacy test or the physical intrusion test if the area examined is an “open field.”
8. Search and Seizure: Words and Phrases. “Open fields” are those unenclosed areas beyond the curtilage of a home in which the defendant has no reasonable expectation of privacy.
9. Search and Seizure. A person cannot have a reasonable expectation of privacy in unenclosed rural land.
10. Search and Seizure: Words and Phrases. An unenclosed area within an incorporated community is an “open field” if it is not curtilage and the person complaining of the intrusion does not, under the facts of the case, have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the area.
Daniel A. Meints owns an uninhabited, unfenced lot in the City of Beatrice, Nebraska (City), on which he kept an array of automobiles and motorcycles. In a bench trial, the county court convicted Meints of multiple violations of a municipal ordinance relating to unregistered motor vehicles. On appeal, the district court reversed Meints' convictions on 2 of the 12 counts and otherwise affirmed. The Nebraska Court of Appeals affirmed the district court's judgment,1 and
we granted Meints' petitions for further review. These appeals present the following question: Does probable cause, standing alone, justify a warrantless search of an individual's real property? We conclude that Fourth Amendment jurisprudence does not recognize a probable cause exception applicable to real property. But we also conclude that the City did not conduct a “search,” because the property invaded was an “open field.” Because no warrant was required, we affirm.
The City prohibits the prolonged parking of unregistered motor vehicles on private property. Section 16–623(a) of the City's code2 provides:
It shall be unlawful for any person in charge or control of any private property within the city ... to allow any motor vehicle which has been unregistered for more than twenty-one (21) days to remain upon any private property. Any motor vehicle allowed to remain on private property in violation of this subsection shall constitute a nuisance and shall be abated.
Section 16–623(b) states that persons who violate the ordinance are guilty of a misdemeanor and subject to fines, ranging from $100 to $500 each day the ordinance is violated.
In March 2011, a City code enforcement officer observed what he believed to be unregistered motor vehicles on Meints' property. The officer saw numerous motor vehicles and motorcycles without license plates or vehicles that were inoperable. The officer did not enter Meints' property. Instead, he took photographs while standing in a public street, an alley, or a neighbor's property.
On that same day, Joe McCormick, a Beatrice police officer, was dispatched to the scene. McCormick initially observed the vehicles from a public street. He did not see any fencing or closed buildings on the property. McCormick testified that he had probable cause to believe Meints was violating § 16–623 and that he entered the property without a warrant
to investigate. While on the property, McCormick took photographs and recorded vehicle identification numbers (VINs). He testified that he did not enter any structure, open any door, or “move anything.”
McCormick returned to the property on May 23, 2011, and saw that the vehicles remained. Since McCormick's first visit, Meints had attached a “no trespassing” sign to a tree. Additionally, Meints was present and told McCormick to stay off the property. But McCormick did not heed the request and entered the property without a warrant to take additional photographs and record VINs. McCormick cited Meints for violating § 16–623 and returned numerous times to issue additional citations.
The City charged Meints in county court with 12 counts of violating § 16–623. The 12 counts related to seven motorcycles and five automobiles. Meints moved to suppress the evidence and observations resulting from McCormick's warrantless entry onto the property. The court denied the motion, reasoning that the property was not entitled to Fourth Amendment protection because it was an “open field.”
The county court found Meints guilty of all charges. Meints appealed to the district court, which reversed his convictions on two counts because of insufficient evidence but otherwise affirmed.
Meints assigned to the Court of Appeals that the county court erred by overruling his motion to suppress. Meints argued that the open fields doctrine did not apply to urban property. The court affirmed on a different ground: the probable cause exception to the warrant requirement.
The Court of Appeals assumed that McCormick had searched Meints' real property and noted that a warrantless search is per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment. But the court stated that among “the warrantless search exceptions recognized by the Nebraska Supreme Court” is an exception for “searches undertaken with consent or with probable cause .”3
Relying on this language, the court held that the observations McCormick made while on a public street gave him probable cause to believe the vehicles were evidence of a crime and allowed him to enter Meints' property without a warrant to gather evidence.
Meints assigns that the Court of Appeals erred by relying on “a mistaken statement of the law—with regard to ‘probable cause’, alone, being a recognized exception to the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution.”
In reviewing a trial court's ruling on a motion to suppress evidence based on a claimed violation of the Fourth Amendment, an appellate court applies a two-part standard of review.4 We review the trial court's findings of historical facts for clear error.5 But whether those facts trigger or violate Fourth Amendment protections is a question of law that we independently review.6
Meints argues that probable cause—standing alone—is not an exception to the search warrant requirement. The City succinctly responds that “the jurisprudence of the State of Nebraska for over a decade has noted that probable cause is a distinct and separate exception to a warrantless search.”7 While both statements are correct, we have been less than precise in our language and must clarify the latter.
We begin with the constitutional text. The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The amendment's language naturally divides into two parts: (1) a prescription that searches and seizures be reasonable and (2) the conditions on which a warrant may issue.8 The relationship between these two parts is not apparent from the text, which has “ ‘both the virtue of brevity and the vice of ambiguity.’ ”9 For example, whether a search is “unreasonable” without a warrant is a question to which a “literal reading of the language of the Fourth Amendment contributes little.”10
The U.S. Supreme Court has resolved some of this ambiguity. It is now well established that “searches conducted outside the judicial process, without prior approval by judge or magistrate, are per se unreasonable.”11 And the Court has consistently referred to a “warrant requirement” for more than four decades.12 If law enforcement conducts a search without a warrant, it is reasonable only if it falls within a band of exceptions the Court has described as “specific,”13 “ ‘well-delineated,’ ”14 “carefully delineated,”15 “specifically established,”16 and “narrow.”17
The City is correct that we have “noted” that probable cause justifies a warrantless search for more than a decade. We have often prefaced our analysis of warrantless searches with a list of exceptions that includes “searches...
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State v. Christensen
...that no trespassing signs, in and of themselves, do not make a police officer's entry on property unlawful"); City of Beatrice v. Meints , 289 Neb. 558, 856 N.W.2d 410, 421 (2014) (holding that a resident "could not reasonably expect that tacking a ‘no trespassing’ sign to a tree would prev......
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United States v. Carloss
...create a right to privacy or automatically place an area under the Fourth Amendment's protections"); see also City of Beatrice v. Meints, 289 Neb. 558, 856 N.W.2d 410, 421 (2014)(holding, post-Jardines, that a resident "could not reasonably expect that tacking a 'no trespassing' sign to a t......
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State v. Perry
...Before addressing the applicability of any exception to the instant case, we pause to address the effect of our recent decision in City of Beatrice v. Meints .7 In that case, we acknowledged we had often been imprecise when describing the exceptions to the warrant requirement and had incorr......
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State v. Wells
...250 Neb. 226, 548 N.W.2d 739 (1996).43 See State v. Borst, 281 Neb. 217, 795 N.W.2d 262 (2011). See, also, City of Beatrice v. Meints, 289 Neb. 558, 856 N.W.2d 410 (2014).44 State v. Buckman, 259 Neb. 924, 936, 613 N.W.2d 463, 475 (2000).45 Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 763, 89 S.Ct. ......