Was it legal for bounty hunter to sneak in home through doggy door to catch fugitive?

“Dog the Bounty Hunter” he wasn’t.

But when Macon bail recovery agent David Lamar Harper slipped into a woman’s home to catch a fugitive, he did sneak in through a doggy door.

The episode happened in March 2014 on Murray Drive, north of Sardis Church Road, in southern Bibb County.

In the years since, the case has drawn the attention of Georgia’s highest courts.

At issue: Whether it was legal for Harper to go in through a locked door to collar a wanted man named Stephen J. Collier.

Prosecutors have said that Harper also led the woman who lived there to believe that Harper was a cop. According to investigators, Harper entered through a locked door — that is, he slipped or reached through a pet door to get into the house — and then pounced on Collier.

Harper was convicted of two counts of criminal trespassing, but the Georgia Court of Appeals later overturned one of those convictions on grounds that the woman who lived in the house had not specifically told Harper he couldn’t come in.

On Monday, however, the Georgia Supreme Court, in a unanimous opinion, reversed the appeals court’s decision, ruling that the woman’s locked door was sufficient notice to keep out.

The state high court’s decision was noted in a release that explained the decision like this:

“Although giving a person express notice through spoken or written words — such as a verbal command or a ‘Do Not Trespass’ sign — can be sufficiently explicit and reasonable under the statute, ‘that does not mean that spoken and written words are the only means by which reasonable notice could be given to a would-be trespasser that would explicitly notify that person that his or her entry is prohibited,’ the opinion says. ‘Indeed, a locked door to a home generally sends a sufficiently explicit message that entry is forbidden to a possible trespasser who encounters that locked door.’”

This story was originally published February 19, 2018 at 1:02 PM with the headline "Was it legal for bounty hunter to sneak in home through doggy door to catch fugitive?."