The federal appeals court based in Denver agreed on Wednesday that Greeley police did not violate the U.S. Constitution by walking onto a man’s front yard and pulling him out of his vehicle for a traffic infraction without a warrant.

The Fourth Amendment generally requires law enforcement to obtain a warrant before conducting searches and seizures, although courts have developed exceptions to that requirement. The protection applies to homes, as well as “curtilage,” meaning the area immediately surrounding and “intimately linked to” the home.

The question for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit was whether the space directly in front of a house’s window, where a detective stood when he grabbed Orlando Vasquez and ordered him out of his car, was curtilage that fell under the Fourth Amendment’s protection.

No, it was not, a three-judge panel decided.

Case: United States v. Vasquez

Decided: January 3, 2024

Jurisdiction: U.S. District Court for Colorado

Ruling: 3-0

Judges: Paul J. Kelly Jr. (author)

Stephanie K. Seymour

Allison H. Eid

Background: Florida v. Jardines (2013)

The U.S. Supreme Court has recognized the Fourth Amendment must protect curtilage in order to prevent police from standing “in a home’s porch or side garden and trawl for evidence with impunity.” As a result, the court considers curtilage as “part of the home itself.” 

Relatedly, the court has also noted that the “core” of the Fourth Amendment gives people the right to retreat into their homes to escape “unreasonable governmental intrusion.”

Vasquez contended that in the dense, urban environment of Greeley, the officers’ presence just outside his front window fell under the curtilage. Therefore, evidence they found when they searched him could not be used to convict him of a crime.

Just after midnight on May 23, 2020, two officers activated their lights upon noticing Vasquez make a right turn on red without fully stopping in a car that had recently expired tags. Vasquez drove approximately two blocks through a residential neighborhood before turning into his home, where he parked in a driveway shared with another house.

Detective John Dietrick walked up the front lawn and stood at Vasquez’s rolled-down window. Vasquez handed over his vehicle registration and provided his name and birthdate. Dietrick reportedly knew Vasquez was a gang member and ordered him out of the car to get patted down for weapons. When Vasquez balked, Dietrick grabbed Vasquez and a brief struggle ensued.

Once on the ground and in handcuffs, Vasquez admitted he had a gun on him. Federal prosecutors charged him with being a felon in possession of a firearm. Vasquez pleaded guilty and received nearly five years in prison.

Vasquez initially sought to suppress evidence of the gun based on an alleged Fourth Amendment violation. Dietrick did not have a warrant when he entered the yard, nor did Vasquez’s alleged traffic violation give officers license to enter in the absence of a warrant, the defense argued. Because Dietrick stood right outside the home’s window, he invaded the curtilage at the time he seized Vasquez.

A trial judge declined to suppress the gun, finding the shared driveway was not curtilage – but making no mention of the yard.

On appeal, the 10th Circuit panel wondered what police should have done differently to avoid an unconstitutional intrusion into the home’s curtilage.

“Maybe they should have just let it go? Is that what you’re suggesting?” asked Judge Allison H. Eid at oral arguments.

Public defender Dean Sanderford responded Dietrick either needed to get a warrant to arrest Vasquez for a traffic violation or else let it go. He added that it did not matter if Vasquez pulled into the home’s curtilage specifically to evade arrest.

“We may not like that, but the Supreme Court has told us in that situation that officers can’t follow a fleeing suspect into their house or their curtilage as a matter of right,” Sanderford argued. Vasquez “had a temporary tag that was expired and he didn’t come to a complete stop at a stoplight. … There was certainly no emergency to justify the officers intruding into this constitutionally protected area.”

The appellate panel’s Jan. 3 order acknowledged the yard was close to Vasquez’s home. But it found the shared driveway could not be curtilage and no evidence suggested either the driveway or the yard were used for “intimate activity” associated with a home.

Addressing Vasquez’s suggestion that the scope of curtilage is different in a dense city, Senior Judge Paul J. Kelly Jr. clarified that the Supreme Court’s criteria for evaluating intimacy apply “regardless of whether the area was urban or rural.”

The case is United States v. Vasquez.