This was a unanimous decision, which indicates it isn’t some leftist plot to overthrow America.
“Wheetley concluded, based principally on Aldo’s alert, that he had probable cause to search the truck. His search did not turn up any of the drugs Aldo was trained to detect. But it did reveal 200 loose pseudoephedrine pills, 8,000 matches, a bottle of hydrochloric acid, two containers of antifreeze, and a coffee filter full of iodine crystals — all ingredients for making methamphetamine. Wheetley accordingly arrested Harris, who admitted after proper Miranda warnings that he routinely “cooked” methamphetamine at his house and could not go “more than a few days without using” it.”
“In short, a probable-cause hearing focusing on a dog’s alert should proceed much like any other. The court should allow the parties to make their best case, consistent with the usual rules of criminal procedure. And the court should then evaluate the proffered evidence to decide what all the circumstances demonstrate. If the State has produced proof from controlled settings that a dog performs reliably in detecting drugs, and the defend-ant has not contested that showing, then the court should find probable cause. If, in contrast, the defendant has challenged the State’s case (by disputing the reliability of the dog overall or of a particular alert), then the court should weigh the competing evidence. In all events, the court should not prescribe, as the Florida Supreme Court did, an inflexible set of evidentiary requirements. The question—similar to every inquiry into probable cause—is whether all the facts surrounding a dog’s alert, viewed through the lens of common sense, would make a reasonably prudent person think that a search would reveal contraband or evidence of a crime. A sniff is up to snuff when it meets that test.”
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/11-817_5if6.pdf
Imagine the results in the drug war if cops could just walk into any home without a warrant.
This was a unanimous decision, which indicates it isn’t some leftist plot to overthrow America.
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But it shows how far removed from the real world these robed idiots are...
The biggest problem with current practice regarding the Fourth Amendment is that regards as binding factual determinations made by judges at pre-trial hearings, in many cases before defendants have a chance to get evidence which may contradict them. If courts really wanted to protect defendants' right to have factual matters in criminal cases be decided by a jury, they should allow defendants to challenge whether officers were in fact acting on the basis of good-faith probable cause which was genuinely supported by oath or affirmation (meaning, among other things, that a finding of probable cause must not rely upon any hearsay, and that officers seeking a warrant actually had a reasonable belief that they would find what they claimed to be looking for). Jurors should be regarded not to construe against a defendant any evidence gathered contrary to such requirements. Note that the legitimacy of a warrant is not just a question of law: in many cases, the question of whether a search should be considered legitimate will hinge upon the relative credibility of various witnesses, and consequently the issue should be regarded as a question of fact.
With regard to dog-initiated searches, I would posit that defendants have the right to demand records of how often dogs alert, how often searches result from such alerts, and how often such searches find the goods which are searched for. If e.g. only 10% of the searches that result from a particular dog's alerts actually find the materials the dog was trained to detect, regardless of whether the dog was just plain wrong, or was detecting trace amounts of the material, or whatever, the fact remains that officers conducting searches on the basis of the dog's alerts would have really only had a 10% chance of finding anything; that would seem rather skimpy as a basis for "probable cause".