WARRANTLESS USE OF PARCEL WIRE INSIDE HOME VIOLATED FOURTH AMENDMENT

In State v. Lagrone, 985 N.E.2d 66 (Ind.Ct.App. 2013), police violated the Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure when they used a parcel wire to monitor a package of marijuana once Lagrone had carried it into his home.  Due to that violation, warrantless entry into Lagrone's home was not justified under the exigent circumstances exception to the Fourth Amendment because under Kentucky v. King, 131 S.Ct. 1849 (2011), such entry to prevent destruction of evidence is allowed only where the police did not create the exigency by engaging in conduct that violates the Fourth Amendment.    

The installation of the GPS device and the parcel wire into the package Lagrone picked up from a hotel did not violate the Fourth Amendment because any privacy interest Lagrone had in the package was lost when United Parcel Service (UPS) opened the package on its premises.  Nor did police monitoring of the GPS device to track the package en route to Lagrone's home violate the Fourth Amendment, because officers also tracked Lagrone on the highway visually. But the monitoring of the parcel wire to determine when the package was opened constituted a search of Lagrone's home. And information obtained from the parcel wire after the package was inside Lagrone's home, i.e., that the package had been opened, could not have been observed from outside the home. As such, the receipt of that information via the parcel wire without a warrant violated Lagrone’s Fourth Amendment rights. And under King (above) the police cannot use the exigent circumstances exception to justify a forced warrantless entry into the home, based on the electronic signal from the parcel wire located inside the home, without having first obtained a warrant.