Tennessee Criminal Lawyer Blog

The right to privacy is one of the most important rights guaranteed to Americans by the United States Constitution, and implicit in that right are many constitutional guarantees that are protected by the courts. One such right is the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures at the behest of law enforcement. The right to privacy in this context basically guarantees that in most situations a law enforcement official cannot make a warrantless entry unsupported by probable cause into a person’s home for the purposes of searching for or seizing evidence.

The right to privacy, however, does have some limitations. One of those limitations is that the right does not exist where the person has no reasonable expectation of privacy. There can be a plethora of reasons for why a person may have a diminished expectation of privacy, and one of those reasons is set to come before the Tennessee Supreme Court on its upcoming docket. In an upcoming case styled State v. Talley, the Court will decide if the defendant had a reasonable expectation of privacy with regard to the common areas of his condominium complex, a common area to which many third parties had unrestricted access. In this case, detectives had performed a warrantless search of the common areas by asking a third party if they could come inside the condominium and look around and obtaining consent to do so. They then gathered evidence that was in plain view in order to provide them with probable cause to execute the search later. The defendant contended that the search was unconstitutional, but his motion was unsuccessful.

While it is true that defendants do not generally have a reasonable expectation of privacy with regard to places where a numerous amount of third parties have unfettered access, some circumstances in this case suggest that law enforcement officials may have overstepped their constitutional boundaries. For example, they specifically went to the defendant’s condominium and knocked on the door, asking if the defendant was home. Upon learning that he wasn’t home, they asked to be let in anyway while concealing the fact that they were detectives. This was done deliberately in an attempt to gather evidence that would provide probable cause for a more extensive search at a later time. Thus, law enforcement officials here essentially exploited the fact that the defendant was not home to manufacture probable cause without first obtaining a search warrant. The Court’s ruling on this one should be intriguing, as it pits the strength one of the most important rights guaranteed to citizens by the Constitution against the necessity of law enforcement officials having discretion as to how they perform their work.

Source: State v. Talley, 34 TAM 33-16 (Tenn.Cr.App. 2009), appeal granted 11/23/09, oral argument 2/11/10.