Even though the search warrant for 836 N. Linley Court did not mention a detached garage and the prosecution conceded the garage was not included in the search warrant, the federal appeals court based in Colorado nonetheless agreed last month that Denver police lawfully entered the building and detained the man sleeping inside.

The Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures requires law enforcement to obtain a warrant, 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.

Richard Ronquillo happened to be sleeping in a detached garage 25 feet away from the single-family home at 836 Linley Court the night a SWAT team converged on the property to make a narcotics arrest. Officers unexpectedly discovered Ronquillo, detained him and patted him down, only to find multiple types of illegal narcotics.

A jury subsequently convicted him and Ronquillo is serving 17.5 years in prison.

At issue for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit was the constitutionality of the officers’ actions at the garage. The government conceded the search warrant did not cover the garage, yet maintained there were other reasons why police acted lawfully.

But a three-judge panel of the 10th Circuit did not address those other reasons because it concluded the government and Ronquillo were both wrong — the warrant included the garage because it was curtilage to the target house.

“Arguably, Defendant used the detached garage as a separate residence. But here, the property line and address encompassed the detached garage, and the same fence around the main residence connected to the detached garage,” wrote Judge Joel M. Carson III in the March 7 opinion.

Ronquillo argued on appeal that multiple factors weighed in favor of finding officers unlawfully entered the boarded-up garage:

• There was no indication a magistrate ever found probable cause to search the building

• The homes on either side of 836 Linley Court were closer to the target house than the garage itself

• None of the surveillance leading up to the SWAT raid suggested drug-related activity happening out of the garage

Before trial, Ronquillo attempted to exclude the drug evidence based on the allegedly unconstitutional search. The government admitted the detached garage was not part of the search warrant, but police were allowed to enter it to ensure officer safety during the larger raid.

U.S. District Court Senior Judge Raymond P. Moore observed the warrant necessarily covered “something more than the house” — meaning the curtilage. He agreed police had the right to breach the garage, “at least initially.”

“When they breach it and look inside,” Moore continued, “it is obvious that it is being used as a separate residence, and at that point, the authority to search that detached structure no longer existed.”

But at the outset, with the garage being “within the fence line” and, thus, part of the curtilage, officers acted reasonably by entering it, Moore concluded. Alternatively, he agreed officer safety was a reason to go inside.

“I think the government is in an interesting position,” Ronquillo’s attorney, Deborah L. Roden, said during oral arguments to the 10th Circuit panel. “The district court, in my opinion, went rogue and decided the search warrant did cover that structure.”

The government acknowledged police knew there was a detached garage 25 feet away from the home prior to the search, leading Senior Judge Bobby R. Baldock to wonder why it was excluded from the warrant application.

“All of those conditions at the time that the affidavit was created in this case — everything you said was already there, plain sight and everything,” he observed.

Ultimately, the panel concluded the omission — and the government’s position that the warrant excluded the garage — did not matter because the garage counted as curtilage through its proximity to the target house and its enclosure in the fence line, among other factors. It upheld Ronquillo’s convictions.

The case is United States v. Ronquillo.