State v. Huddy and the Community Caretaking Exception

Huddy, ___N.C. App. ___, 799 S.E.2d 650 (April 18, 2017) was decided earlier this year and reversed the trial court’s denial of a motion to suppress. A unanimous Court of Appeals found that the search of the defendant’s home was not justified under either the knock and talk doctrine or the community caretaking exception to the warrant requirement. The knock and talk portion of the opinion is interesting (indeed, the concurring opinion is devoted solely to that topic) and invalidates the search on those grounds, but I wanted to focus on the community caretaking aspect of the opinion. Jeff previously blogged about the community caretaking exception to the warrant requirement here. Huddy doesn’t answer all of the questions raised in that post about the exception, but the opinion sheds some light on its scope and shows the balancing test for the exception in practice. Facts. At 11am, an officer was patrolling an area that he believed was at risk of residential break-ins. While driving past the defendant’s home, he noticed that the doors of a car parked in the driveway were open. He also noticed that the home was surrounded by trees, which in his experience made it a target for break-ins. The officer drove down the 150-yard driveway to examine the car and ran its tags, which came back with an address different from the residence. The officer approached the front door, which looked unused and did not seem to be the primary entrance to the home. He did not [...]