State v. Dugan

Atcheson, J.:

The United States Constitution draws a line at the threshold of a person’s home over which law enforcement officers may not step without a warrant from a judge or exigent circumstances so compelling as to override that fundamental right. The Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable searches of dwellings or seizures of their occupants reflects a tenet the founders considered essential to the ordered liberty they fought a war to achieve and then cherished as this nation matured. That prohibition is no less significant nearly two and a half centuries into this country’s…