Have a case where narcotics officers were investigating drug activity at a local hotel.

To make a long story short the only real probable cause for the issuance of the search warrant was a sniff by a drug dog at the door of the hotel. (This was one of those "motel 6" type hotels where the doors to the room are on the exterior of the building so there are not any common hallways or communal areas shared by all guests)

In the "post-jardines" world, is the search invalidated or is there a texas case since jardines which the expectation of privacy is less in a hotel room to which the search is still good?

The most on point case I could find was U.S. v Legall an extremely short unpublished federal opinion which upheld the k9 sniff since there was a common hallway in the hotel the court ruled that law enforcement was not on the "curtilage" of the defendant's hotel room.

However, in my case the hotel room door opens up to the outside world. Thoughts? Opinions?

I did some research on this issue looking for cases out of Texas and the Fifth Circuit after Jardines. I found one--Ronnie Lee Crowly Jr. v. State of Texas (2013 Tex. App. Lexis 8933, No.-2-12-00064-CR (Tex. App.--Fort Worth July 18, 2013). They upheld the search, but dropped a footnote, "we do not address the applicability of Florida v. Jardines (cite omitted), if any, in which the Supreme Court, in a split decision, held that 'the government's use of trained police dogs to investigate the home and its immediate surroundings is a 'search' within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.....;"

Jardines is a property rights case. The proper analysis will turn on the hotel guest's right, under his contract with the hotel, to exclude others from the area immediately outside his door. Watch out for them trying to argue that the police did not have the permission of the hotel owner to walk the dog--that argument would seem to run afoul of basic standing law, that one litigant cannot assert the rights of another. Apartment cases should be on point--condo cases will probably be a closer call.

Shawn,

Rendon, which is a granted PDR pending before the CCA may be helpful. You can pull the filings from the Court's website to get a more in-depth discussion . . . but I'm including our summary of the case below.

RENDON, MICHAEL ERIC PD-0013-15 & PD-0015-15 02/04/2015

"The Court of Appeals' finding that the area outside of Appellee's apartment constituted the curtilage of that apartment incorrectly decided an important question of State and Federal law that has not been but should be settled by the Court of Criminal Appeals." Rendon lived in an upstairs apartment at a four-plex. The two upstairs apartments shared a staircase in the middle that led to a balcony and front door on each side. Police took a drug dog to Rendon's front door, and he alerted to the presence of drugs. At a suppression hearing, the trial court ruled that because the area leading to the front door was part of the curtilage of Rendon's apartment, the dog sniff was a search under Florida v. Jardines, 133 S.Ct. 1409 (2013).

The court of appeals upheld the trial courts suppression ruling, holding that the front door and area leading to it was not a common area of the four-plex but was part of the curtilage of Rendon's apartment. It based this determination on the following factors: Rendon's apartment was the only one upstairs on the left, he hung plants on the balcony railing in front of his apartment, and Rendon's downstairs neighbor had chairs in the area in front of his apartment.

The State points out that, according to United States v. Dunn, 480 U.S. 294 (1987), an area is part of the curtilage if it "harbors the intimate activity associated with the sanctity of a man's home and the privacies of life." It contends that to qualify as curtilage, the resident must have the authority to exclude others from the area. Here, renters at the four-plex did not have this authority, notwithstanding their placement of plants and chairs in the area in front of their apartments. The State distinguishes such an area from the front porch of a free-standing home, which is under the exclusive control of the resident. - See more at: http://www.spa.texas.gov/pendi...sthash.L86gxAsz.dpuf