Camacho

Police in this case looked through a window and observed defendant packaging cocaine in his home. The officers made this *828 observation while standing in defendant’s side yard, a place they had no legal right to be. The Court of Appeal held the police violated defendant’s right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and, accordingly, concluded the trial court erred in denying defendant’s motion to suppress the evidence against him. We affirm.

Facts

On June 26, 1997, police received an anonymous complaint of a “loud party disturbance” at defendant Cayetano Calderon Camacho’s house. Officers Wood and Mora, responding to the complaint, arrived at defendant’s home around 11:00 p.m. Officer Wood testified that, on arrival, he heard no noise upon exiting his patrol car. Approaching defendant’s home, the officers heard no excessive noise. Officer Wood testified, rather, that he heard merely an unidentifiable “audible noise,” one that was neither loud, disturbing nor violative of the city’s noise ordinance.

The officers did not knock on the front door. Instead, while Officer Wood remained on the front…

I fully concur in the determination to affirm the Court of Appeal’s judgment reversing the denial of defendant’s suppression motion.

I write separately because although the “two threshold questions” (maj. opn., ante, at p. 830) derived from Justice Harlan’s concurring opinion in Katz v. United States (1967) 389 U.S. 347, 360 [ 88 S.Ct. 507, 516 , 19 L.Ed.2d 576 ], may confirm that the majority reaches the correct result in this case, this reference should not be read to imply that Fourth Amendment analysis invariably proceeds from a determination “first [whether] a person [has] exhibited an actual (subjective) expectation of privacy and, second, [whether] the expectation be one that society is prepared to recognize as ‘reasonable.’ ” (Id. at p. 361 [ 88 S.Ct. at p. 516 ] (cone. opn. of Harlan, J.).) This formula does not serve as an all-purpose or universally applicable template for assessing every challenged search or seizure. (See Amsterdam, Perspectives on the Fourth Amendment (1974) 58 Minn. L.Rev. 349, 385.) Rather, its utility is generally limited to issues concerning whether the place searched or the manner in which police officers conducted the search gave rise to an…

I respectfully dissent.

This case presents the question whether the Fourth Amendment mandates the suppression of evidence obtained when law enforcement officers, in responding to a late-night complaint of unduly loud noise at a residence and attempting to ascertain the location from which the noise emanated, entered a shallow, unenclosed side yard adjacent to the residence and observed— through a large, completely uncovered first-story window—criminal activity within the residence. The trial court determined that the evidence should not be suppressed, but a majority of this court disagrees, concluding that because there was no sidewalk or pathway implicitly inviting the public to enter the side yard, the police officers observed defendant’s activity from a place where they assertedly “had no legal right to be” (maj. opn., ante, at p. 828) and, as a consequence, that the actions of the police constituted an unlawful search.

Although the majority insists that its determination that the officers’ conduct violated defendant’s constitutional rights is not based “merely [on the circumstance that the officers] were trespassing on defendant’s private property” (maj. opn., ante, at p.…

Police in this case looked through a window and observed defendant packaging cocaine in his home. The officers made this observation while standing in defendant's side yard, a place they had no legal right to be. The Court of Appeal held the police violated defendant's right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and, accordingly, concluded the trial court erred in denying defendant's motion to suppress the evidence against him. We affirm.

On June 26, 1997, police received an anonymous complaint of a "loud party disturbance" at defendant Cayetano Calderon Camacho's house. Officers Wood and Mora, responding to the complaint, arrived at defendant's home around 11:00 p.m. Officer Wood testified that, on arrival, he heard no noise upon exiting his patrol car. Approaching defendant's home, the officers heard no excessive noise. Officer Wood testified, rather, that he heard merely an unidentifiable "audible noise," one that was neither loud, disturbing nor violative of the city's noise ordinance.

The officers did not knock on the front door. Instead, while Officer Wood remained on the front lawn,…