Posted on 02/27/2013 5:08:50 PM PST by Kaslin
Imagine that a police officer, after taking it upon himself to search someone's car, is asked to explain why he thought he would find contraband there. "A little birdie told me," he replies.
Most judges would react with appropriate skepticism to such a claim. But substitute "a big dog" for "a little birdie," and you've got probable cause.
Or so says the U.S. Supreme Court, which last week unanimously ruled that "a court can presume" a search is valid if police say it was based on an alert by a dog trained to detect drugs. The court thereby encouraged judges to accept self-interested proclamations about a canine's capabilities, reinforcing the alarmingly common use of dogs to justify invasions of privacy. Drug-detecting dogs are much less reliable than widely believed, with false-positive error rates as high as 96 percent in the field. A 2006 Australian study found that the rate of unverified alerts by 17 police dogs used to sniff out drugs on people ranged from 44 percent to 93 percent.
Police and prosecutors commonly argue that when a dog alerts and no drugs are found, "the dog may not have made a mistake at all," as Justice Elena Kagan put it, writing for the Court. Instead, it "may have detected substances that were too well hidden or present in quantities too small for the officer to locate."
This excuse is very convenient -- and completely unfalsifiable. Furthermore, probable cause is supposed to hinge on whether there is a "fair probability" that a search will discover evidence of a crime. The possibility that dogs will react to traces of drugs that are no longer present makes them less reliable for that purpose.
So does the possibility that a dog will react to smell-alike odors from legal substances, distractions such as food or cues from their handlers. Given all the potential sources of error, it is hard to assess a dog's reliability without looking at its real-world track record. That is why the Florida Supreme Court, in the 2011 decision that the U.S. Supreme Court overturned, said police should provide information about a dog's hits and misses.
"The fact that the dog has been trained and certified," it said, "is simply not enough to establish probable cause," especially when, as in most states, there are no uniform standards for training or certification.
Kagan, by contrast, minimized the significance of a dog's success at finding drugs in the field. She said police testing in artificial conditions is a better measure of reliability, even though handlers typically know where the drugs are hidden and can therefore direct the animals to the right locations, either deliberately or subconsciously.
Instead of requiring police to demonstrate that a dog is reliable, this decision puts the burden on the defense to show the dog is not reliable through expert testimony and other evidence that casts doubt on the training and testing methods used by police. But experts are expensive, and police control all the relevant evidence.
Police even determine whether the evidence exists. Many departments simply do not keep track of how often dog alerts lead to unsuccessful searches, and this decision will only encourage such incuriosity.
The court previously has said that police may use drug-sniffing dogs at will during routine traffic stops and may search cars without a warrant, based on their own determination of probable cause. Now that it has said a dog's alert by itself suffices for probable cause, a cop with a dog has the practical power to search the car of anyone who strikes him as suspicious.
Even the question of whether a dog did in fact alert may be impossible to resolve if there is no video record of the encounter, which is often the case. As Florida defense attorney Jeff Weiner puts it, the justices "have given law enforcement a green light to do away with the Fourth Amendment merely by uttering the magic words, 'My dog alerted.'"
I see you left out the part where the Constitution then limits the powers of the federal government. Typical for a liberal.
Good finds! Evidence trumps bluster every time.
I could have posted the whole US Constitution if I'd thought you were a total dumbass. Are you admitting that you are?
You are basically staking the position that Congress, the President and SCOTUS can pass, sign and uphold whatever law they want, usurping powers not enumerated to them by the Consitution - on a conservative, limited-government website - and you’re calling ME the dumbass? Go to DU, they’ll embrace you over there.
So why do you bluster? Why do you avoid answering the questions posed to you, LIE berTARDian? Are you too lazy to do the research or just too dumb?
Florida v. Jardines (11-564)
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/cert/11-564
Seriously, you are exactly the kind of person Franklin was concerned about when he replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
Have you suffered head trauma?
Do you need me to hold your hand and walk you through one step at a time? Who elects the the legislators? Who elected Pelosi, Boxer, Schumer, Durbin, Obama, etc.? Who was stupid enough to re-elect them. The problems clearly lie within the electorate. The bigger problem is how do we common sense conservatives convince the leftards to start helping us bail this sinking ship to keep it afloat long enough to make permanent repairs.
Go to DU, they’ll embrace you over there.
You can have it all to yourself. There are enough dumbasses on conservative forums to deal with.
Show me where you asked me a question.
When are you going to begin posting like an adult?
#58 and #61. You may want to address those posed to your fellow LIEberTARDian, fattigermaster, as he/she/it seems to not possess the stones or ability to properly respond. Thanks in advance.
It happens time and time again. Clear concepts are warped to get around the clear Constitutional constraints on federal power. Ex post facto application of sex offender registration is justified by saying such isn't a punishment, even though that section of the Constitution doesn't limit prohibition of ex post facto laws to punishments (and I have no problem with registration of sex offenders, just not ex post facto application of such). Obamacare is decreed to be a tax and therefore allowable as a federal law.
Sandra Day O'Conner, despite her many flaws, nailed this kind of problem in her dissent in Kelo:
In moving away from our decisions sanctioning the condemnation of harmful property use, the Court today significantly expands the meaning of public use. It holds that the sovereign may take private property currently put to ordinary private use, and give it over for new, ordinary private use, so long as the new use is predicted to generate some secondary benefit for the public–such as increased tax revenue, more jobs, maybe even aesthetic pleasure. But nearly any lawful use of real private property can be said to generate some incidental benefit to the public. Thus, if predicted (or even guaranteed) positive side-effects are enough to render transfer from one private party to another constitutional, then the words “for public use” do not realistically exclude any takings, and thus do not exert any constraint on the eminent domain power.
[snip]
Finally, in a coda, the Court suggests that property owners should turn to the States, who may or may not choose to impose appropriate limits on economic development takings. Ante, at 19. This is an abdication of our responsibility. States play many important functions in our system of dual sovereignty, but compensating for our refusal to enforce properly the Federal Constitution (and a provision meant to curtail state action, no less) is not among them.
[snip]
Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random. The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms. As for the victims, the government now has license to transfer property from those with fewer resources to those with more. The Founders cannot have intended this perverse result.
Show me where you asked me a question.
#58
Answered in post #59.
and #61.
Answered in post #93: 85% of deployments where no drugs are present.
And you call others "dumb" and "tards"? Very amusing.
I provided two dozen references and studies while you contributed nothing to the dialogue except screeching like a butthurt bitchboy. I’m satisfied I made my case.
The only manhood you’ve got left is writing checks on the internet your ass can’t cash on the street. Good luck with that, Poindexter.
How about all the leftard legislators? The very people who create the laws and confirm the USSC justices. You expect them to follow the US Constitution? Those people are elected by YOUR dumbass fellow citizens. Why is it that we conservatives can't get honorable people elected to office?
Your mindless, idiotic accusations about me are indicative of your juvenile emotionalism.
Since rational, fact-based debate clearly is not possible with you, you may have the last post.
The Constitution was meant to constrain the excesses of democracy, not facilitate such.
Do you agree or disagree?
You continue to reinforce that observation.
Funny that's exactly what I've witnessed in your responses. The US Constitution was conceived and written by men and all of its provisions and limitations have to be enforced by men. What is it about that that you fail to comprehend?
If the penalty for taking out the dog is the same as for a human cop, the gang bangers may decide to just take out the handler. This would result in the cops deciding that hassling the gang bangers is too risky.
If the gang banger sniper is really smart, he'll do it when the cop is hassling one of his gang's rivals. That way the rivals get the heat, but the intimidation effect on the cops is the same.
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