United States v. Watkins.
No. 23-6210. 10/14/2025. W.D.Okla. Judge Hartz. Fourth Amendment—Felon in Possession of a Firearm—Felon in Possession of Ammunition—Curtilage of a Dwelling.
October 14, 2025
Police officers went to the OakTree Inn and Suites, a motel in Oklahoma City, to look for a man who had violently carjacked and kidnapped a woman in the motel’s parking lot a few hours before. The woman, who had managed to escape, described her assailant as a short Black man who had dreadlocks and a goatee and was wearing black jeans. The officers gave the motel manager the assailant’s description, and the manager said it described a man staying in room 231. Officers went to room 231, situated along an open-air walkway. The walkway extended a few feet past the door, and one of the room’s windows, above an air-conditioning unit, overlooked the extension. Officer McNally looked into the window above the AC unit. Through an inch-wide opening in the curtains, he observed a short Black man with dreadlocks and a goatee sitting on a bed next to a handgun with an extended magazine. The officers knocked and announced their presence, and after a three-hour standoff, Watkins emerged and was arrested. Watkins was indicted on one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm. He moved to suppress the evidence found in room 231 based on a Fourth Amendment violation, arguing that Officer McNally physically intruded into the room’s curtilage by stepping onto the “porch area” in front of the window and peering through a window with partially closed curtains. The district court found no Fourth Amendment violation because Officer McNally was standing in a public place when he looked through the window, and it denied the motion. Watkins was subsequently charged in a superseding indictment with a second count of being a felon in possession of ammunition based on ammunition found at a murder scene that largely matched the ammunition found in room 231 nine months earlier. He pleaded guilty to the firearm charge, reserving the right to appeal the denial of his motion to suppress, and proceeded to trial on the ammunition charge. A jury convicted Watkins on the ammunition charge, and the district court imposed consecutive sentences of 120 months on the firearm charge and 180 months on the ammunition charge.
On appeal, Watkins argued that both convictions must be set aside because Officer McNally’s observation occurred in the room’s curtilage and was thus an unlawful search. A public place is not curtilage, and if a police officer makes observations while in a public place using only their unaided senses, a search has not occurred, even if the observed objects are within an area protected by the Fourth Amendment. Here, Officer McNally observed Watkins’s handgun and extended magazine from a place freely accessible to the public—an open-air walkway that was part of the motel’s common area that was freely accessible to all staff, guests, and visitors and was directly accessible from the motel parking lot. Therefore, the walkway was not intimately tied to the motel room and was not curtilage.
Watkins also argued that even if the walkway’s extension was not curtilage, by peering through the gap in the window curtain Officer McNally invaded his reasonable expectation of privacy and thus violated his Fourth Amendment rights. Even when an officer has not entered a dwelling’s curtilage, the officer’s observations of people or activity within the dwelling may constitute a Fourth Amendment search, but only when the officer uses extraordinary means to make the observations. As stated above, Officer McNally’s observations occurred from a public place using only his unaided eyes, so he did not violate Watkins’s reasonable expectation of privacy. Further, the evidence obtained by the observation here could not be excluded under the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule because the officer’s observation complied with ample precedent allowing an observation from a public place using only his natural vision. Accordingly, Officer McNally’s observations did not constitute a search under the Fourth Amendment.
The convictions were affirmed.