The Colorado Supreme Court on Monday decided that police did not violate a Fort Collins man’s Fourth Amendment right against unlawful search and seizure when his wife admitted the officers into their home.

Leonora Williams, the wife of Kirk Thomas Williams, found drugs and paraphernalia in his travel bag, and she hid them in their home. She met with a Fort Collins police officer and asked him to remove the contraband.

She subsequently permitted the officer and two others to enter while Kirk Williams was home, in order to take possession of methamphetamine and a glass pipe. At some point, Kirk Williams objected to the officers’ presence.

Williams was placed under arrest. One officer estimated that the encounter was over “in five minutes.”

The court found Williams’s statement to the officer to leave did not constitute a timely enough objection legally.

“Had Mr. Williams stood at the door and said ‘stay out’ or otherwise objected to the officers’ entry, we would find that the Randolph exception applies,” Justice Carlos Samour wrote for the court.

In the 2006 Georgia v. Randolph case, the U.S. Supreme Court found that while consent by one of the shared occupants of a premises is sufficient to allow a warrantless search, another resident being physically present and objecting to the search in that moment would be sufficient to halt it.

In the Colorado case, the Randolph exception was inapplicable, the court said, because Williams was not present at the time his wife granted a search of the premises.

If Williams’s contention that an objection by one party at any point could end the search, Samour wrote, “would the proposed rule cause officers to rush and to be less cautious while conducting consent searches for fear that a co-occupant could show up at any moment and revoke the consent provided?”

The case is Kirk Thomas Williams v. The People of Colorado.