The only differences between this and an outright search are arbitrary.
Sad, isn't it. Maybe judges should have read the BILL OF RIGHTS berfore making that decision.
How is a dog snffing your car a loss of freedom ? This I got to hear .
I have mixed feelings about this. It seems unfair. But then again, it was a "nervous" Algerian Muslim at the Washington/Canadian border in 1999 which led a heroine border agent to search his trunk and find massive explosives which he was going to use to blow up Los Angeles International Airport. She had no prior suspicions about him.
I would be nervous too -- with 282 pounds of marijuana in he trunk.
"The ACLU submitted a friend-of-the-court brief in the case on behalf of Roy Caballes, a 36-year-old Las Vegas resident who was charged with marijuana trafficking in Illinois in 1999. Caballes, who was en route to Chicago, was pulled over by a state trooper for driving six miles above the speed limit. While the trooper was issuing Caballes a warning ticket, a second trooper, who had not been called, arrived and began walking a canine unit around the car. The dog discovered marijuana in the trunk and Caballes was arrested and later sentenced to 12 years in prison."
Court opinion
Yes. The innate right to not having a dog breathe next to your car.
Next is the innate right to not have police look at you.
Was there ever any doubt of the outcome?
What happened to the concept of a "search warrant"? This Supreme Court has been awful on issues of privacy.
I'd like to say that this is unbelievable and shocking, but, unfortunately, it's pretty much par for the course these days.
Hey, combine this ruling with this story: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1327287/posts
Maybe on the way home from driving across town from one store to another, after buying the third box of cold medicine my family needs (since you can only buy two boxes at one time now), I will be stopped at a catch-all road block, sniffed and arrested as a suspected meth dealer! After all, those three boxes of cold medicine are now illegal. Then my name will be in the paper for a drug dealing arrest. Minor inconvenience? No.
People need to remember that laws are cumulative, and that's when they start sweeping up innocent citizens and ruining lives.
What is going on with the Surpreme Court????? If a guy gets stopped for speeding and "seems nervous", it gives the police a right to call out the dogs to smell search him? Say goodbye to privacy.
Let's change the story; all other facts remain the same except as below:
Dog sniffs car, finds several hundred pounds of explosive in trunk. Suspect Izsheit Midrawrz confesses that he is to be taking this to a suicide bombing of a local school.
Do you now feel any differently? Or should the cops have let him go?
Be careful; constitutional search and seizure law is entirely written based upon the objective observations of the cops at the time of the search. You cannot justify a search based upon its results.
Oh you just had some pot, we'll let you go, but it's OK to pull you out of the car and beat you if we later find some guns or something dangerous. Sorry, I can't justify that legal reasoning.
In Blythe, California, a city ordinance declares that a person must own at least two cows before he can wear cowboy boots in public.......
So Thomas and Scalia voted for this, huh? SIGH.
If you're not stashing the crack, what's the big deal in allowing someone's dog sniff one's pocket?
I never thought I would agree with this twit..
So now we know which SC justices leave a bunch of McDonald's bags along with Wendy's wrappers and Burger King ones on the floor of their back seat. A light sprinkling of pepper around and those dogs will paw all the trash out for the cops to pick up and toss in a plastic bag.