The Baker Associates blog discusses a case coming before the Tennessee Supreme Court:
…. The right to privacy, however, does have some limitations. One of those limitations is that the right does not exist where the person has no reasonable expectation of privacy. There can be a plethora of reasons for why a person may have a diminished expectation of privacy, and one of those reasons is set to come before the Tennessee Supreme Court on its upcoming docket. In an upcoming case styled State v. Talley, the Court will decide if the defendant had a reasonable expectation of privacy with regard to the common areas of his condominium complex, a common area to which many third parties had unrestricted access. In this case, detectives had performed a warrantless search of the common areas by asking a third party if they could come inside the condominium and look around and obtaining consent to do so. They then gathered evidence that was in plain view in order to provide them with probable cause to execute the search later. The defendant contended that the search was unconstitutional, but his motion was unsuccessful.
While it is true that defendants do not generally have a reasonable expectation of privacy with regard to places where a numerous amount of third parties have unfettered access, some circumstances in this case suggest that law enforcement officials may have overstepped their constitutional boundaries.
Read more on Baker Associates.