The curtilage of a home is the area "directly and intimately connected with the [home] and in proximity" to it. State v. Courtright, 60 N.C. App. 247 (1983). In other words, it is the area that "harbors the intimate activity associated with the sanctity of a man's home and the privacies of life." United States v. Dunn, 480 U.S. 294 (1987) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). Classic example of curtilage include attached garages, back patios, and fenced-in back yards. Because the occupants of a home have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the curtilage, it is protected by the Fourth Amendment, meaning that it can't be searched by a law-enforcement officer without a warrant unless one of the exceptions to the warrant requirement applies. See generally Robert L. Farb, Arrest, Search and Investigation in North Carolina 73 (3d ed. 2003); Dunn, supra (stating that the curtilage is "treated as the home itself" for Fourth Amendment purposes). In Dunn, the Court stated that four factors must be considered when determining whether an area is part of the curtilage of a home: "the proximity of the area . . . to the home, whether the area is included within an enclosure surrounding the home, the nature of the uses to which the area is put, and the steps taken by the resident to protect the area from observation by people passing by." There are plenty of interesting cases weighing and balancing those four factors in connection with single-family houses, but one of [...]
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