State v. Bash

Summary

The South Carolina Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeals and reinstated the circuit court’s suppression order, holding that the officers’ warrantless entry into the backyard—within the home’s curtilage—constituted an unconstitutional search. The Court affirmed that the curtilage analysis should focus on whether the area is so intimately tied to the home to merit Fourth Amendment protection, and that no knock‑and‑talk exception applied. Consequently, the seized drugs were excluded as evidence.