The Minnesota DWI Case Of The Week is Wirkus v. Commissioner of Public Safety (Decided August 3, 2026, Unpublished, Minnesota Court of Appeals) which stands for the proposition that if you have been drinking and driving and make it safely home, KEEP YOUR DOOR SHUT!
In Wirkus, the Petitioner caused a disturbance at her former place of employment and then left the scene. The former employer called the police complaining Ms. Wirkus was drunk and provided a description of her vehicle and license plate.
The police drove to the Petitioner's residence to investigate and to serve her with a "Trespass Notice" from the former employer. The police went to the front door of her home, which had a screen door attached that opened outwards from the home's solid front door.
The officer rang the bell but no one answered. The officer then opened the screen door and knocked on the solid door. A man identified as Wirkus’s fiance opened the front door. At that moment, a dog slipped out of the house and into the yard. The fiance stepped out of the house and closed the front door and told the officers to “hang on” while he went into the yard to collect the dog. The officer remained at the front entrance, holding the screen door open with her body. After a short time, the officer again knocked on the front door and waited. Getting no response, she knocked again.
Ms. Wirkus opened the front door. She stepped one foot outside, reached out and grabbed the screen door with her left hand, and said, “I’m going to shut this door.” At the same time, Wirkus reached her right hand out and pushed against Olstad’s utility belt, which was equipped with a service weapon, a taser, ammunition, and a baton. The police immediately grabbed Wirkus’s right arm, pulled her fully outside, and tried to put her arms behind her back to place her in handcuffs.
The police brought the Petitioner to the station where she agreed to submit to a Data Master breath test with a result of .14% BAC.
The Commissioner of Public Safety revoked the Petitioner's license and she filed a challenge to the revocation arguing (among other things) that the police unlawfully intruded on her residence without a warrant.
The District Court sustained the revocation and on appeal, the Minnesota Court of Appeals affirmed the revocation noting:
"Wirkus argues that the district court misapplied Hasse in concluding that Olstad did not intrude on her residence by preventing the front door from closing. In Hasse, we held that an officer committed a warrantless entry into a constitutionally protected area by “kicking his leg out to trip the auto-reverse sensor” of a garage-door opener to prevent a garage door from closing when Hasse was inside his garage and trying to close the door. 679 N.W.2d at 745. We reasoned that, while a garage can be entered by officers if left “impliedly open,” Hasse’s garage was not impliedly open because he was trying to close the door. Id. at 746-47. As a result, the officer had entered an area in which Hasse had a reasonable expectation of privacy. Id. at 747. The district court here distinguished Hasse, explaining the officers “did not prevent the closing of any door that was in the process of being closed” and, instead, were reacting for their own safety to Wirkus’s “aggressive conduct” of taking a step out of the door and pushing on Officer Olstad’s utility belt."
"Wirkus argues that the district court clearly erred by finding that Olstad did not prevent a door from being closed because Olstad admitted that she was blocking the screen door from being closed. At the hearing, Olstad agreed that she was “holding the screen door open with [her] body.” But the issue here, as in Hasse, is whether Olstad, by holding the screen door open, was intruding on a place in which Wirkus had a reasonable expectation of privacy. Id. at 746. There are two main differences between this case and Hasse that establish that Olstad was not intruding in a protected place."
"First, the screen door here opened outward such that Olstad did not have to enter the house to open it or hold it open. This situation is different from Hasse, in which the officer had to move his foot into the garage (a constitutionally protected space) to keep the door open. See id. at 745. The officers here only intruded on the area outside the front entrance, which is a constitutionally unprotected space. See Crea, 233 N.W.2d at 739; see also United States v. Santana, 427 U.S. 38, 40-42 (1976) (concluding that the appellant had no expectation of privacy when standing in her doorway). And, as the district court noted, Wirkus opened the front door—the officers neither opened it nor blocked any attempt to close it."
"Second, neither Wirkus’s nor her fiance’s conduct supported a reasonable expectation of privacy in the screen door area before the seizure. The fiance made no attempt to close it when he answered the door and stepped outside to chase the dog. And when Wirkus finally answered the door, the screen door had been open for over a minute. In these circumstances, Olstad had no reason to believe that the screen door area was not impliedly open. This differs from Hasse, in which the officer saw the garage door being closed and then intruded to keep it open. See Haase, 679 N.W.2d at 745. It is true that Wirkus likely established an expectation of privacy when she opened the front door, took a step outside, said that she was going to close the screen door, and tried to close it. But Wirkus simultaneously pushed Olstad’s utility belt, which triggered the officers’ seizure of Wirkus, and Olstad had no time to react to Wirkus’s newly expressed intent to close the screen door. Therefore, Olstad’s opening of the screen door and holding it open until the seizure did not intrude on an area with a reasonable expectation of privacy."
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"And unlike in Hulne, Wirkus actually stepped out of her home before the seizure. 'A search occurs whenever governmental agents intrude upon an area where a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy.' In re Welfare ofB.R.K., 658 N.W.2d 565, 578 (Minn. 2003). The officers here did not enter Wirkus’s home and thus did not intrude upon a protected area."
Moral Of The Story: Curiosity can also catch a cat.
If you or a loved one have been charged with a Minnesota DWI, feel free to contact Minneapolis DWI Lawyer, F. T. Sessoms at (612) 344-1505 for answers to all of your Minnesota DWI and DUI questions.
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