1.10.1: Annotated Cases and Briefs

Examine these three cases and their corresponding case brief examples. In these “instructional” versions of the cases, there are expandable icons or boxes where you will find some explanations (e.g., ), and you will see annotated portions highlighted in yellow (click the annotation).

As an introduction to reading and briefing cases, explanatory/instructional annotations are provided within these examples, which include:

• Florida v. Jardines;
• Mills v. City of Overland Park; and
• Malley v. Briggs.

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Case 1: Florida v. Jardines

Supreme Court of the United States

Florida v. Joelis Jardines 

133 S. Ct. 1409, 569 U.S. 1 (2013)

  What are these names, and why are they in this order?

The portion above is the case's caption. There are a few things to note here. The cases we read are written by appellate courts (reviewing decisions by courts below them). These are either from (1) an intermediate appellate court (typically referred to as a court of appeals, which reviews cases directly from the trial court)^[1] or (2) a court of last resort (typically referred to as a supreme court).^[2]

Being named before or after the ‘v.’ does not indicate whether a party was a plaintiff or a defendant (the party who was sued) in the trial court. Instead, a party named before the ‘v.’ was the “loser” in the lower court. Courts refer to this party as the appellant or the petitioner. A party named after the ‘v.’ was the "winner" in the lower court and is referred to as an appellees or a respondent.

Justice SCALIA delivered the opinion of the Court.

We consider whether using a drug-sniffing dog on a homeowner's porch to investigate the contents of the home is a "search" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.

  The Issue

The court has now identified the issue.

Identifying the issue immediately when starting the case is good style, but it is not necessarily common. In many cases, the reader must search deeper into the case before the Court identifies the issue it needs to answer. Also, legal issues are frequently comprised of sub-issues; it is good to be aware of that.

I

  The Statement of Facts

The court is now going to write about the case's background. 

Usually, fairly early on in the case, courts describe most of the key facts that led up to the dispute. Courts vary on how and when they separate particular sections of their opinions. And many times, like here, courts do not label their sections. In this case section "I" is the summary of the background facts leading to the dispute and the procedural history of the case.

Some of these facts are crucial because cases are generally decided based on the unique circumstances that led to each dispute. However, some important facts that do not get mentioned in the "facts" section end up appearing in the court's analysis.

As noted above, courts also explain the procedural history of the case (i.e., how the case got to the court from the trial court level and who won at the court or courts below). This usually occurs after explaining the factual background.

In 2006, Detective William Pedraja of the Miami-Dade Police Department received an unverified tip that marijuana was being grown in the home of respondent Joelis Jardines. One month later, the Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration sent a joint surveillance team to Jardines’ home. Detective Pedraja was part of that team. He watched the home for fifteen minutes and saw no vehicles in the driveway or activity around the home and could not see inside because the blinds were drawn. Detective Pedraja then approached Jardines’ home accompanied by Detective Douglas Bartelt, a trained canine handler who had just arrived at the scene with his drug-sniffing dog. The dog was trained to detect the scent of marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and several other drugs, indicating the presence of any of these substances through particular behavioral changes recognizable by his handler.

Detective Bartelt had the dog on a six-foot leash, owing in part to the dog’s “wild” nature [and had a] tendency to dart around erratically while searching. As the dog approached Jardines’ front porch, he apparently sensed one of the odors he had been trained to detect, and began energetically exploring the area for the strongest point source of that odor. As Detective Bartelt explained, the dog “began tracking that airborne odor by … tracking back and forth,” engaging in what is called “bracketing,” “back and forth, back and forth.” […] Detective Bartelt gave the dog “the full six feet of the leash plus whatever safe distance [he could] give him” to do this— he testified that he needed to give the dog “as much distance as I can.” […] And Detective Pedraja stood back while this was occurring, so that he would not “get knocked over” when the dog was “spinning around trying to find” the source. […]

After sniffing the base of the front door, the dog sat, which is the trained behavior upon discovering the odor’s strongest point. Detective Bartelt then pulled the dog away from the door and returned to his vehicle. He left the scene after informing Detective Pedraja that there had been a positive alert for narcotics.

On the basis of what he had learned at the home, Detective Pedraja applied for and received a warrant to search the residence. When the warrant was executed later that day, Jardines attempted to flee and was arrested; the search revealed marijuana plants, and he was charged with trafficking in cannabis.

At trial, Jardines moved to suppress the marijuana plants on the ground that the canine investigation was an unreasonable search. The trial court granted the motion, and the Florida Third District Court of Appeal reversed. On a petition for discretionary review, the Florida Supreme Court quashed the decision of the Third District Court of Appeal and approved the trial court’s decision to suppress, holding (as relevant here) that the use of the trained narcotics dog to investigate Jardines’ home was a Fourth Amendment search unsupported by probable cause, rendering invalid the warrant based upon information gathered in that search.

  The Procedural History

The previous paragraph is the procedural history of the case.

We granted certiorari^[3], limited to the question of whether the officers' behavior was a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.

  General Note

The previous sentence is an abbreviated version of the issue, which is more clearly stated in the first sentence of this case.

II

  The Rules

The portions below highlighted in yellow are statements of the rules of the case that the court will apply to the facts (i.e., the analysis and rationale) to arrive at its outcome.

The Fourth Amendment provides in relevant part that the "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated." The Amendment establishes a simple baseline, one that for much of our history formed the exclusive basis for its protections: 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." United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. 400, 406-407, n. 3 (2012). By reason of our decision in Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967), property rights "are not the sole measure of Fourth Amendment violations"— but though Katz may add to the baseline, it does not subtract anything from the Amendment's protections "when the Government does engage in [a] physical intrusion of a constitutionally protected area."That principle renders this case a straightforward one. The officers were gathering information in an area belonging to Jardines and immediately surrounding his house—in the curtilage of the house, which we have held enjoys protection as part of the home itself. And they gathered that information by physically entering and occupying the area to engage in conduct not explicitly or implicitly permitted by the homeowner.

  Note: The Previous Paragraph

The purple highlights in preceding paragraph are pieces of analysis. A legal analysis is the application of a legal rule(s) to the specific facts of the case. In this instance, the court provided some analysis early by telling the reader that the officers’ conduct was investigatory and occurring within a constitutionally protected area.

In many cases, courts put all of the legal analysis together in the same section. That didn’t happen here. 

Other analysis is also peppered throughout the opinion, which again be indicated with purple highlights.

A

The Fourth Amendment “indicates with some precision the places and things encompassed by its protections”: persons, houses, papers, and effects. Oliver v. United States, 466 U.S. 170, 176 (1984). <mark style=“background-color:yellow;”>The Fourth Amendment does not</mark>, therefore, <mark style=“background-color:yellow;”>prevent all investigations conducted on private property; for example, an officer may (subject to</mark> <mark style=“background-color:yellow;”></mark><mark style=“background-color:yellow;”>Katz</mark><mark style=“background-color:yellow;”>) gather information in what we have called “open fields”—even if those fields are privately owned—because such fields are not enumerated in the Amendment’s text.</mark> Hester v. United States, 265 U.S. 57 (1924).

<mark style=“background-color:yellow;”>But 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.”</mark> Silverman v. United States, 365 U.S. 505, 511 (1961). 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.

<mark style=“background-color:yellow;”>We</mark> therefore <mark style=“background-color:yellow;”>regard the area “immediately surrounding and associated with the home”—what our cases call the curtilage—as “part of the home itself for Fourth Amendment purposes.”</mark> Oliver, supra, at 180. That principle has ancient and durable roots. Just as the distinction between the home and the open fields is “as old as the common law,” Hester, supra, at 59, so too is the identity of home and what Blackstone called the “curtilage or homestall,” for the “house protects and privileges all its branches and appurtenants.” 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 223, 225 (1769). <mark style=“background-color:yellow;”>This area around the home is “intimately linked to the home, both physically and psychologically,” and is where “privacy expectations are most heightened.”</mark> California v. Ciraolo, 476 U.S. 207, 213 (1986).

<mark style=“background-color:yellow;”>While the boundaries of the curtilage are generally “clearly marked,” the “conception defining the curtilage” is at any rate familiar enough that it is “easily understood from our daily experience.”</mark> Oliver, 466 U.S., at 182, n. 12. Here <mark style=“background-color:purple;”>there is no doubt that the officers entered it:</mark> <mark style=“background-color:yellow;”>The front porch is the classic exemplar of an area adjacent to the home and “to which the activity of home life extends.”</mark> Ibid.^[8]

B

Since the officers’ investigation took place in a constitutionally protected area, <mark style=“background-color:purple;”>we turn to the question of whether it was accomplished through an unlicensed physical intrusion</mark>.[1] While law enforcement officers need not “shield their eyes” when passing by the home “on public thoroughfares,” Ciraolo, 476 U.S., at 213, <mark style=“background-color:purple;”>an officer’s leave to gather information is sharply circumscribed when he steps off those thoroughfares and enters the Fourth Amendment’s protected areas</mark>. In permitting, for example, visual observation of the home from “public navigable airspace,” we were careful to note that it was done “in a physically nonintrusive manner.” Ibid. Entick v. Carrington (1765), a case “undoubtedly familiar” to “every American statesman” at the time of the Founding^[9], states <mark style=“background-color:yellow;”>the general rule clearly: “[O]ur law holds the property of every man so sacred, that no man can set his foot upon his neighbour’s close without his leave</mark>.”[*]^[10] As it is undisputed that <mark style=“background-color:purple;”>the detectives had all four of their feet and all four of their companion’s firmly planted on the constitutionally protected extension of Jardines’ home, the only question is whether he had given his leave (even implicitly) for them to do so. He had not.</mark>

“<mark style=“background-color:yellow;”>A license may be implied from the habits of the country,” notwithstanding the “strict rule of the English common law as to entry upon a close.</mark>” McKee v. Gratz, 260 U.S. 127, 136. We have accordingly recognized that “the knocker on the front door is treated as an invitation or license to attempt an entry, justifying ingress to the home by solicitors, hawkers and peddlers of all kinds.” Breard v. Alexandria, 341 U.S. 622, 626 (1951). This <mark style=“background-color:yellow;”>implicit license typically permits the visitor to approach the home by the front path, knock promptly, wait briefly to be received, and then (absent invitation to linger longer) leave</mark>. Complying with the terms of that traditional invitation does not require fine-grained legal knowledge; it is generally managed without incident by the Nation’s Girl Scouts and trick-or-treaters.[2] Thus, <mark style=“background-color:yellow;”>a police officer not armed with a warrant may approach a home and knock, precisely because that is “no more than any private citizen might do</mark>.” Kentucky v. King, 563 U.S. 452, 469 (2011).

But <mark style=“background-color:purple;”>introducing a trained police dog to explore the area around the home in hopes of discovering incriminating evidence is something else. There is no customary invitation to do</mark> <mark style=“background-color:purple;”></mark><mark style=“background-color:purple;”>that.</mark> <mark style=“background-color:purple;”></mark><mark style=“background-color:purple;”>An invitation to engage in canine forensic investigation assuredly does not inhere in the very act of hanging a knocker.</mark>[3] To find a visitor knocking on the door is routine (even if sometimes unwelcome); to spot that same visitor exploring the front path with a metal detector, or marching his bloodhound into the garden before saying hello and asking permission, would inspire most of us to—well, call the police. <mark style=“background-color:yellow;”>The scope of a license—express or implied—is limited not only to a particular area but also to a specific purpose.</mark> Consent at a traffic stop to an officer’s checking out an anonymous tip that there is a body in the trunk does not permit the officer to rummage through the trunk for narcotics. <mark style=“background-color:purple;”>Here, the background social norms that invite a visitor to the front door do not invite him there to conduct a search</mark>.[4]

[…]

Here, […] <mark style=“background-color:orange;”>the question before the court is precisely</mark> <mark style=“background-color:orange;”></mark><mark style=“background-color:orange;”>whether</mark> <mark style=“background-color:orange;”></mark><mark style=“background-color:orange;”>the officer’s conduct was an objectively reasonable search</mark>. As we have described, <mark style=“background-color:yellow;”>that depends upon whether the officers had an implied license to enter the porch, which in turn depends upon the purpose for which they entered</mark>. Here, <mark style=“background-color:purple;”>their behavior objectively reveals a purpose to conduct a search, which is not what anyone would think he had license to do.</mark>

III

The State argues that investigation by a forensic narcotics dog by definition cannot implicate any legitimate privacy interest. The State cites for authority our decisions ^[11][that] held, respectively, that canine inspection of luggage in an airport, chemical testing of a substance that had fallen from a parcel in transit, and canine inspection of an automobile during a lawful traffic stop, do not violate the "reasonable expectation of privacy" described in Katz.

Just last Term, we considered an argument much like this. Jones held that tracking an automobile’s whereabouts using a physically-mounted GPS receiver is a Fourth Amendment search. The Government argued that the Katz standard “show[ed] that no search occurred,” as the defendant had “no `reasonable expectation of privacy’” in his whereabouts on the public roads, Jones, 565 U.S., at 406—a proposition with at least as much support in our case law as the one the State marshals here.[*]^[12] But because the GPS receiver had been physically mounted on the defendant’s automobile (thus intruding on his “effects”), we held that tracking the vehicle’s movements was a search: a person’s “Fourth Amendment rights do not rise or fall with the Katz formulation.” Jones, supra, at 409. The Katz reasonable expectations test "has been added to, not substituted for," the traditional property-based understanding of the Fourth Amendment, and so is unnecessary to consider when the government gains evidence by physically intruding on constitutionally protected areas. Jones, supra, at 409.

Thus, we need not decide whether the officers’ investigation of Jardines’ home violated his expectation of privacy under Katz. One virtue of the Fourth Amendment’s property-rights baseline is that it keeps easy cases easy. That t<mark style=“background-color:purple;”>he officers learned what they learned only by physically intruding on Jardines’ property to gather evidence is enough to establish that a search occurred.</mark>

[…]

<mark style=“background-color:green;”>The government’s use of trained police dogs to investigate the home and its immediate surroundings is a “search” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.</mark> The judgment of the Supreme Court of Florida is therefore affirmed.

{% hint style=“info” %}
The sentence highlighted in <mark style=“background-color:green;”>green</mark> is the holding.
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It is so ordered.

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Notes

1. For example: Wisconsin Court of Appeals; U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals.

2. For example: Wisconsin Supreme Court; U.S. Supreme Court.

3. The court is referring to granting the petitioner's writ of certiorari, which is request to an appellate court—usually the U.S. Supreme Court or a state's highest court—asking if the court will hear their case. In most cases, the U.S. Supreme Court and the states' highest courts have the ability to pick and choose what cases they hear. This is called "discretionary review."

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