State v. Rendon

• Decision Date: 16 December 2015
• Docket Number: NOS. PD–0013–15 & PD–0015–15,S. PD–0013–15 & PD–0015–15
• Citation: 477 S.W.3d 805
• Parties: The State of Texas v. Michael Eric Rendon, Appellee
• Court: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

477 S.W.3d 805

The State of Texas

v.Michael Eric Rendon, Appellee

NOS. PD–0013–15 & PD–0015–15

Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas.

FILED: December 16, 2015

Brendan Wyatt Guy, for The State of Texas.

Edward F. Shaughnessy III, for Michael Eric Rendon.

ALCALA, J., delivered the opinion of the Court in which MEYERS, JOHNSON, RICHARDSON, and NEWELL, JJ., joined.

In this case, we are asked to decide whether it constitutes a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment for law-enforcement officers to bring a trained drug-detection dog directly up to the front door of an apartment-home for the purpose of conducting a canine-narcotics sniff. We hold that it does. Consistent with the reasoning of the Supreme Court's opinion in Florida v. Jardines,¹ we conclude that the officers' use of a dog sniff at the front door of the apartment-home of Michael Eric Rendon, appellee, resulted in a physical intrusion into the curtilage that exceeded the scope of any express or implied license, thereby constituting a warrantless search in violation of the Fourth Amendment. We, therefore, affirm the judgment of the court of appeals, which had affirmed the trial court's rulings granting appellee's motions to suppress. See State v. Rendon, Nos. 13–13–00665–CR, 13–13–00666–CR, 2014 WL 6881630 (Tex.App.—Corpus Christi Dec. 4, 2014).

I. Background

In 2012, law-enforcement officers in Victoria were investigating appellee on suspicion of drug activity. One day, several officers, including Victoria Police Detective Stover and his trained drug-detection dog, Baco, went to the apartment complex where appellee lived. The apartment complex had four units, with two units upstairs and two units downstairs. Appellee lived in one of the upstairs units, which were accessible by a single staircase leading up to a landing. The landing was for the two upstairs units, with the door to each apartment on opposite ends of the landing. The stairs and landing had a metal fence that traversed the border, with the posts of the fence being multiple inches apart. Because the metal-fence posts were several inches apart, it would be possible to see the stairway and the door for each of the upstairs units even from the ground below.

When he first arrived, Detective Stover took Baco, his drug-detection dog, to the apartment complex's parking lot, where appellee's car was parked. Baco, who walked around the exterior of appellee's car, exhibited a positive alert to the smell of illegal narcotics. Detective Stover then walked Baco up the stairs to appellee's front door. Baco again alerted to the odor of illegal narcotics. Later that day, relying on the information obtained through the dog sniff, Detective Stover applied for a search warrant for appellee's vehicle and apartment. In his search-warrant affidavit, Detective Stover noted that Baco had alerted to the presence of an odor of illegal narcotics both on appellee's vehicle and on the "bottom left portion" of appellee's front door. Specifically, the affidavit stated,

I deployed K–9 Baco on the front door of the residence. K–9 Baco displayed a change in behavior and breathing at the seem [sic] indicating the positive alert to the odor of illegal narcotics from within. K–9 Baco also indicated a final taught response to the odor of narcotics from within by sitting.

A judge signed the search warrant and officers executed it, seizing about two pounds of marijuana and $4,904 in cash, for which appellee was indicted for possession of marijuana and money laundering in two cause numbers.² Appellee filed a motion to suppress in each case. At the hearing on his motions, appellee asserted that the warrant to search his apartment was invalid on the basis that the information used to establish probable cause—Baco's positive alert to the presence of narcotics at his front door—had been obtained through an unlawful search in violation of the Fourth Amendment.

At the suppression hearing, Detective Stover testified consistently with his search-warrant's affidavit's description of the search as having occurred at the bottom left portion of the front door by stating that he "deployed Canine Baco on the exterior of the apartment," and Baco "indicated a positive alert on the exterior of the door[.]" The trial court granted appellee's motions to suppress the evidence obtained from the search of his apartment. In its findings of fact and conclusions of law, the trial court found that appellee's apartment "was located on the 2 ^nd floor of the apartment building and was the only apartment to the left of the stairs (another apartment was to the right of the stairs)." The court reasoned that, although the stairs leading to the second floor were a "public or common area," the landing to the left of the top of the stairs "led only and directly to defendant's door, [and] was therefore part of the ‘curtilage’ of defendant's apartment[.]" The trial court determined that Baco's alert on the front door of appellee's apartment constituted an intrusion into the "curtilage" and that such intrusion constituted an unlawful search in violation of the Fourth Amendment. After excluding the unlawfully obtained information, the trial court ruled that the remaining information in the search-warrant affidavit was inadequate to establish probable cause to support the issuance of the search warrant.

The State appealed. On appeal, the court of appeals upheld the trial court's rulings suppressing the evidence. See Rendon, 2014 WL 6881630, at *4. The court of appeals agreed with appellee's contention that Baco's "sniff search occurred in the curtilage of [appellee's] apartment, and was, thus, unreasonable under [Florida v. ] Jardines and the Fourth Amendment." Id. at *3 (citing 133 S.Ct. 1409 (2013) ). Thus, "bringing a trained police dog to sniff the bottom left portion of [appellee's] apartment door in hopes of discovering incriminating evidence exceeded the scope of any express or implied license allowed under the Fourth Amendment." Id. at *4 (citing Jardines, 133 S.Ct. at 1416 ). After setting aside the information derived from the unlawful dog sniff, the court upheld the trial court's determination that the remaining information in the search-warrant affidavit was inadequate to establish probable cause, and it held that the search warrant was invalid. Id. at *5.

We granted the State's petition for discretionary review to determine whether the court of appeals correctly concluded that the area outside appellee's front door constituted the curtilage of his apartment.³

II. The Physical–Intrusion Theory in Jardines Applies to this Case

Although our holding is more limited than the court of appeals's conclusion, we agree with the court of appeals that the reasoning of Jardines applies to this case. See Jardines, 133 S.Ct. at 1414–17. As we explain more fully below, we hold that the officers' conduct in bringing a trained drug-detection dog up to the threshold or area immediately outside of appellee's front door for the purpose of conducting a canine-narcotics sniff was an "unlicensed physical intrusion" onto the curtilage of his home that constituted a search in violation of the Fourth Amendment. See id. at 1415. Because the facts here show that the dog sniff occurred at the threshold of appellee's apartment-home and thus was clearly included within the physical-intrusion theory of Jardines, we need not reach the broader holding of the court of appeals that the portion of the landing to the left of the top of the stairs leading to appellee's door was the curtilage of his apartment and also subject to Jardines 's physical-intrusion theory. See id.; Rendon, 2014 WL 6881630, at *4 (concluding that "the area immediately in front of Rendon's apartment is no different from the front porch of a free-standing home," and, therefore, bringing a trained drug-detection dog to that location exceeded the scope of any express or implied license and thus constituted a search for Fourth Amendment purposes).

The Fourth Amendment provides in relevant part that "[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated." U.S. CONST. amend. IV. In Jardines, the Supreme Court explained that this text "establishes a simple baseline." Jardines, 133 S.Ct. at 1414. Namely, the Court indicated that, when " ‘the Government obtains information by physically intruding’ on persons, houses, papers, or effects, ‘a search within the original meaning of the Fourth Amendment’ has ‘undoubtedly occurred.’ " Id. (quoting United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. ––––, 132 S.Ct. 945, 950–51, n. 3 (2012) ). In particular, with respect to the special constitutional protections that attach to the home, the Court observed that,

when it comes to the Fourth Amendment, the home is first among equals. At the Amendment's "very core" stands "the right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion." This right would be of little practical value if the State's agents could stand in a home's porch or side garden and trawl for evidence with impunity; the right to retreat would be significantly diminished if the police could enter a man's property to observe his repose from just outside the front window.

Id. (quoting Silverman v. United States, 365 U.S. 505, 511 (1961) ).

Applying these principles in Jardines, the Supreme Court considered whether it would constitute a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment for law-enforcement officers to use a drug-sniffing dog on the porch of a single-family residence to investigate the contents of the home. Id. at 1413. Comparing the physical intrusion into the curtilage of the home to the placement of a GPS receiver that had been physically mounted to a defendant's automobile, the Jardines Court applied the "traditional property-based understanding of the Fourth Amendment" to hold that the intrusion onto Jardines's porch was unauthorized. See id....