## Facts

- New Mexico State Police and the Army National Guard conducted “Operation Yerba Buena 2006,” using helicopters to locate suspected marijuana grows in Taos County.
- A helicopter crew performed coordinated aerial surveillance over and around Norman Davis’s rural residence.
- Davis’s property included a fenced backyard and a greenhouse near the home, treated as part of the home’s curtilage.
- The helicopter flew at very low altitude and, according to the record, caused substantial disturbance (e.g., dust and debris, property and vegetation impacts, and alarm to residents).
- After the aerial observation, ground officers went to Davis’s property, obtained consent to search the greenhouse, and seized 14 marijuana plants.
- Davis moved to suppress, arguing the warrantless helicopter surveillance violated the Fourth Amendment; the trial court denied suppression, and Davis entered a conditional guilty plea preserving appeal.

## Issues

1. Whether low-altitude helicopter surveillance of a home’s curtilage, conducted in a disruptive manner as part of targeted law-enforcement efforts, constitutes a “search” under the Fourth Amendment requiring a warrant.
2. If the aerial surveillance was an unconstitutional search, whether the later seizure of marijuana plants after officers obtained consent must be suppressed as fruit of the prior illegality.

## Decision

- The New Mexico Supreme Court held the helicopter surveillance, as conducted, was an unreasonable warrantless search under the Fourth Amendment.
- The Court concluded the subsequent consent search and seizure of the plants was derived from, and tainted by, the unconstitutional aerial search.
- The Court reversed the contrary federal-law conclusion reached below and reversed Davis’s conviction, requiring suppression of the evidence.

## Legal Principles

- The curtilage of a home carries a strong reasonable expectation of privacy for Fourth Amendment purposes.
- Aerial observation is not categorically exempt from the Fourth Amendment; whether it is a “search” depends on the context, including altitude, typicality of public flights at that altitude, and the degree of intrusion.
- Highly intrusive, low-altitude helicopter surveillance that disrupts property and enables targeted inspection of curtilage can exceed what the public commonly does from lawful airspace and qualify as a Fourth Amendment search.
- Evidence obtained by exploiting an unconstitutional search must be suppressed, including evidence later obtained by consent when the consent search is prompted by, and closely connected to, the prior illegality.

## Conclusion

The court ruled that law enforcement’s low-altitude, disruptive helicopter surveillance of residential curtilage was a Fourth Amendment search requiring a warrant, and it suppressed the marijuana plants seized after a consent search because the seizure flowed from the unlawful aerial operation.


State v. Davis, 360 P.3d 1161 (N.M. 2015)