Posted on 01/30/2005 6:04:29 PM PST by raffish
Supreme Court allows dog searches
Drugs sniffed in car at traffic stop
By Stephen Henderson
KNIGHT RIDDER WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court gave police broader search powers yesterday, saying the Constitution doesn't protect motorists' vehicles from the "nosy" inquiries of drug-sniffing dogs during routine traffic stops.
In a 6-2 ruling, the justices sided with Illinois state troopers who used a narcotics-detection dog to sniff around Roy Caballes' trunk after stopping him for speeding. Chief Justice William Rehnquist, sick with thyroid cancer, didn't take part in the case.
It turned out that Caballes was transporting $250,000 in marijuana, which was found after the dog alerted officers to the stash.
Caballes said the use of the dog violated his right to privacy, since the officers had no evidence to suggest he was a drug offender before the dog arrived. To expand the scope of the stop beyond a traffic stop, the officers needed probable cause. The Illinois Supreme Court agreed with him and threw out his conviction.
But the justices said yesterday that Caballes had no constitutional right to privacy concerning illegal drugs, and that because the dog was trained only to search for contraband narcotics -- as opposed to money or any other lawful possession -- the officers' action didn't violate constitutional search-and-seizure protections.
In short, the court said a sniff wasn't a constitutionally guarded search, so long as it was a sniff for contraband.
"We have held that any interest in possessing contraband cannot be deemed 'legitimate,'" Justice John Paul Stevens wrote. "Accordingly, the use of a well-trained narcotics-detection dog ... during a lawful traffic stop, generally does not implicate legitimate privacy interests."
The ruling gives police, who can't search cars themselves without probable cause, an easier way to apprehend drug offenders as a result of routine traffic stops. By simply using dogs instead of their own powers of observation, they can avoid constitutional rigors.
That's what's wrong with the decision, said John Wesley Hall, an Arkansas defense lawyer who helped write a brief for the National Association of Criminal Defense lawyers in support of Caballes.
"All this does is exacerbate the problem of profile stops," Hall said, saying police often target people who "look like" drug dealers for traffic stops, hoping to bust them for something bigger. "Now they just need to stop someone who fits their profile, and bring the dog."
I've owned enough dogs to know that training them to bark on demand, with even the most subtle of cues, is not exactly rocket science. Now, thanks to the SCOTUS, it's entirely legitimate for law enforcement to search my vehicle, as long as they have a "well-trained narcotics-detection dog" in tow. Who gets to define what "well-trained" means, of course, gets left glaringly up in the air.
Expect to see many more dogs being pressed into service for the purpose of justifying searches that would never pass Fourth-Amendment muster otherwise. Don't expect them to be sniffing for explosives, though: studies have demonstrated that they can't do that *and* sniff for drugs. I doubt that I need to point out where the money lies.
Somebody ought to get hold of that dog and put him to work in a different line of business, eh?!
Here's a helpful idea. Pull your car off the road onto private property. "Accidentally" lock your keys in the car. Once the car is on private property, they can't tow it without a request from the property owner, and they can't search it incident to your arrest for whatever trumped up reason without a warrant. You'll piss them off, but you'll beat it in court.
I think this is sensible decision. If you are committing a crime, whether you are seen performing the crime by the police, or the dog smell you performing the crime, then you should be arrested. As the SC justice said, the right to privacy does not give you the right to perform an illegal activity. I applaud this decidion.
'Don't do the crime, if you don't want to do the time'
I have a magical crime detector, care to let me turn it on you?
Pay no attention to muawiyah. He has never seen an unconstitutional law that he does not support.
Sweet! Not even three minutes until my post gets crosslisted under "BITTERDOPEHEADS."
I reject the characterization, which has no basis in fact, but I'm admittedly amused. Keep on keeping on with that battle for liberty, and never mind that your myopia is costing you the war.
The only people running around in circles in a total panic are drug users. Pure and simple.
Occam's razor.
True... true...
How about sniffer cats? Sniffer raccoons? Wait.
If 10 out of 10 bark-on-command results in large amounts of contraband being found, your red herring kinda disappears, doesn't it?
And that's the good part about what I've got to say about you.
What about states that have medical laws? Thought this was a huge amount the dog could not tell quantity. Possesion alone would be legal in some states.
Panic? Whatever. Having followed drug policy roughly since Peter McWilliams died choking on his own vomit because the feds threatened to seize his mother's house if he were to get within ingestion distance of marijuana, I've mostly resigned myself to the fact that the prohibitionists are in control. I look forward to hearing more about what I am and am not allowed to ingest, courtesy of the FDA, DEA, and ONDCP.
Keep talking about how much you hate big government, by all means, but at least grant me the right to be amused by your self-contradiction.
What Occam's razor actually shows us is that politicians, lawyers, law enforcement -- the chiefs, not the men in the line of fire on the street -- and drug traffickers alike have a mutual interest in prohibition. Are you a member of one of these interest groups? If so, I can see why you're still on board with Nixon's little shell game. If not, I respectfully urge you to reconsider.
"First they came for the Jews..."
Again with the bad juju about the "Dark Ages" of the US before the socialist Congress of 1914 began the era of unlimited government power. Yep, we sure are safer now that cops can steal your property to fund the WOD on the mere suspicion of a drug connection to keep Jack and Jill from enjoying a doobie.
He who gives up liberty in exchange for security deserves neither liberty nor security.
I personally support this decision, but then again I'm not afraid of the cops in the least. Now when I was seventeen years old, and the cops were needlessly harassing me, I would have felt quite differently. But today, for some strange reason, the cops are completely oblivious to me. They don't give me traffic tickets, and they don't give me speeding tickets. It's like magic.
Just give it up; give it all up.
You ever get to drive one of those "seized automobiles"? I have. And I don't mean the junk. What's really funny is that when they use one of the really nice money cars on a stakeout the unsuspecting badguys will actually come by to check it out and see if they can "buy it".
It's that $10,000 cash transfer reporting thing at work.
And, once again, if you can't do the time, don't do the crime.
I was detained at the Canadian border because a dog "hit" on my car. They held me for 2 hours, questioned me and my girlfriend seperately, totally freaked out when they found $4,500 in my suitcase in hundred dollar bills, then told me the money triggered the dog. Of course they tore the door panels, carpets, seats etc out of the car, cut open my paddles for my raft and found NOTHING. They finally welcomed me to Canada, as I told them to take their country and shove it up their @$$es. Now the same thing could happen on any traffic stop to ANY American citizen, and you cheerlead? How many false hits is worth each bust? I guess Americans prize security more than freedom, we as a nation deserve our future spot on the trash heap of history, but we won't be stoned...........at least legally.
"If 10 out of 10 bark-on-command results in large amounts of contraband being found, your red herring kinda disappears, doesn't it?"
You're seriously advancing this as a possibility?
Only in your dreams could this happen. Or do you actually live in a world in which the driver next to you is more likely to have $250,000 of weed in his car than to be an innocent whose privacy should take precedent over fishing expeditions? I can only wish I had as much faith in our government as you apparently do.
If you're comfortable with your glove compartment and trunk being searched -- though you'd normally have had every right to prevent the officer from searching, but oh wait, the dog barked -- then fine. We'll just check a few more amendments off the list that you're willing to defend.
I'm glad you're a good, upstanding citizen, Publius. I commend you for not partaking of substances that aren't currently in political vogue. OTOH, I don't think you appreciate just how far decisions such as this go toward shifting us from an innocent-until-proven-guilty paradigm to exactly the opposite.
My wife was held at a road stop until a dog could be brought to search her car. The probable cause? She declined permission when asked "mind if we take a look in the car? ... She said yes .. She minded.
The problems are not with the criminals that the dogs" catch" ... but with the innocent citizens who are subject to detainment and search for no reason.
If you don't see a problem with this policy ... then you are the problem.
The law (including this case) says a dog sniffing around your car is not a search. The dog's sense of smell is equivalent to a cop's sense of sight. If the dog hits, the odor was the equivalent of being in "plain sight".
That said, since it wasn't a search, the cops didn't need probable cause to use a dog on your wife's car.
I agree your wife was wrongly detained based on your statement.
What I am saying is that if the dog is with the police when the stop is made, and the dog smells something illegal that he is trained to smell, then to me that is no different then if the police actually saw you doing something illegal at that particular point in time.
But to detain a citizen without probable cause until a dog can be brought onsite, that is a difference.
I do not agree that is legal.
I say you cannot detain someone because you want to, if nothing illegal has been seen nor is suspected.
To me that is unlawful detainment and is illegal.
To unlawfully detain someone without probable cause because they will not let you search their vehicle is dead wrong.
I believe the courts have ruled on this being illegal sometimes in the past.
Case in point: when I fly back into the country from overseas, almost always the custom agents will walk around with a drug smelling dog, around me and around all of the other passangers. That is okay with me. Now if the custom agents did not have their dog with them that day, and they were to pull me out of line or away from the others as I retrieved my luggage, without probable cause, because they wanted to have me smelled by the dog when the dog was brought onsite at a later time, then that would be wrong, and in my opinion, unlawful detainment and illegal.
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