Posted on 03/26/2013 9:39:18 AM PDT by JustSayNoToNannies
Supreme Court Says It's Illegal For A Police Drug Dog To Sniff Your PorchPrivate land vs. public land, I believe.
Then why is it not illegal for a police drug dog to sniff your car?
“Then why is it not illegal for a police drug dog to sniff your car?”
Because the car is on public property, and nobody requires a warrant to walk around on public property, drug dog or no.
“Both Obama appointees voted in the (pro-4th Amendment) majority in this case.”
If the constitution is too difficult for these morons to figure out in an 8-1 or 9-0 ruling then we are in desperate need of smarter judges or in truth, we are in need of honest judges.
We have seen these morons who have been appointed by “our” side go off the reservation way too many times the most recent which comes to mind is Roberts on CommieCare.
If they cannot comprehend the Constitution as written and cannot or will not take to time to read the operator’s manual known as the Federalist Papers then they are traitors to the Constitution and to their oath.
Glad there’s some good news today.
Alito belongs to that group of conservatives, very familiar to my age group, of law and order conservatives. This was reprsented by Nixon, to a lesser extent by Reagan and to a much greater extent by Giuliani. Living in NY I supported Rudy’s efforts but many law and order conservatives had the emphasis on order not law. With the increase in libertarian GOPers and conservatives these ideas seem dangerously close to tyranny. Unlike liberals for whom honesty and consistency are values to be winked at, conservatives try to maintain both as values and the paradox of law and order v liberatian values is difficult to overcome.
Americans' search and seizure rights should not end when they enter public property.
The Supreme Court unanimously ruled, only a month ago, that a drug-sniffing dog alerting to a car on a public street was sufficient grounds to search the car. Today's ruling was that bringing the dog onto the porch of a house was itself a "search" requiring a warrant. (The distinction is that, under prior SCOTUS rulings, a search of a car requires only probable cause, not a warrant, but that a search of a house requires both probable cause and a warrant).
Not burned, fresh and growing. Very distinctive.
However, that was never the sole basis for my PC. It was what got my attention, but never would I be out on such legal thin ice as that. A bit of observation and investigation would flesh things out nicely.
I guess I was old fashioned - I thought the Constitituion was something to uphold and a boundary within which I did my job.
Quaint now, I suppose.
Yes, I have read all that. The USSC has ruled that the use of a dog constitutes a search; that has been my argument all along. Why then, is it not considered an illegal search when police use a dog to search your car? Why do Americans forfeit our search and seizure rights when we go out in public? And don’t tell me because the USSC said so. The court’s been wrong on many issues, this is just another.
“Americans’ search and seizure rights should not end when they enter public property.”
I agree, but looking at, or smelling, the exterior of your vehicle is not considered a search.
Yes, and if they let the dog loose inside your car, just like taking him onto your porch, it would be a search. Walking the dog around the exterior of a vehicle, though, isn’t considered a search. Not saying I agree, just that is the way the law stands.
I guess the real tricky case, after this ruling, would be something like letting the dog stick his head into the flatbed of a pick-up for a sniff. It’s technically the exterior, like a porch, but still would be entering the vehicle proper.
I disagree. The dog is a tool used in a search just as a flashlight or any other tool would be. Police use dogs as tools to search thus, a search is taking place when they use a dog.
Take for example the smell of raw weed. (And let's leave aside, for the moment, the argument over whether it should be legalized or not.) I have no trouble smelling any appreciable quantity of that and if I am in a place where any Joe has a right to be, e.g. on the sidewalk, then that becomes part of PC to initiate a search if I can localize the source and articulate the facts. Maybe the search is with a warrant, maybe without if it meets the court defined guidelines and is necessary. (I'd never conduct a search without a warrant just because I could. That gives the defense one more reason to raise challenges and doubts over your justification due to 'exigent circumstances' and maybe get a righteous case tossed out.
Let's take a less benign example, like the smell of gasoline on the person of someone hightailing it away from an arson scene, or the stench of a rotting corpse in the trunk of the car. I've dealt with both. In both cases, I was where I had a right to be, where any citizen has a right to be. In both cases the perp brought the evidence of the crime out into the open, in a public place, where I could detect it. Their rights remained intact, and I got my evidence and secured convictions.
We both know that dogs have searched citizens’ vehicles w/o the presence of the odor of raw weed. Many times police have used dogs to search citizens’ cars based on “suspicion” and nothing more.
A search, to be legal, almost always requires probable cause (with only a few exceptions not relevant here). Some searches also require a warrant, but not all searches.
The issue of searching automobiles first came before the Supreme Court in Carroll v. United States (1925), involving prohibition agents searching a car for bootleg liquor. The Court said that a search of a car needed probable cause, but not a warrant, because otherwise the suspect could drive the car away before the agents could get a warrant.
In a batch of drug cases that came before the Court in the early 1970s, the defendants argued (and the Courts' more liberal justices agreed) that the police should detain the car, or tow it to the police station, and then go to a judge for a warrant. The Courts' majority (led by Blackmun and Rehnquist) rejected that argument, and said that people have a "lesser expectation of privacy" in a car than in their house.
If you find that explanation not very satisfactory, I agree with you, but that is the Court's rationale.
Breyer is liberal on some (most?) issues, but tends to be quite the law-and-order judge in criminal cases. He sometimes gets Ginsburg to go with him in criminal cases, but not today.
I find the court's explanation far from satisfactory. And from what I had read they never before considered the use of a dog a "search". Today they said it is so that begs the question why must Americans forfeit their search and seizure rights simply because they are in a car in public?
I agree, so why is it legal to use them on vehicles, and at schools for backpacks and lockers?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.