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MO: No reasonable expectation of privacy in a condemned house

By John Wesley Hall, Jr.

Defendant’s occupying a condemned house owned by his father, that he refused to consent to a search of because it was his father’s, lacked a reasonable expectation of privacy in the house. As a general matter, there is no expectation of privacy in a condemned building. (Moreover, at trial, it came out he lived elsewhere.) State v. Snow, 2009 Mo. App. LEXIS 1872 (W.D. November 10, 2009): There was also substantial evidence at the hearing to establish that, while Snow had previously rented the house, he was no longer doing so because the City had condemned it. At the hearing, the State's evidence showed that, after Ronnie had consented to have the house condemned, the City sent Snow an order to vacate the premises, which informed him that the house was unfit to live in and that he was no longer legally allowed to live there...continue to full post

Full post as published by Fourth Amendment on February 18, 2010 (boomark / email).