Posted on 02/16/2005 3:23:27 AM PST by Wolfie
Seems straight forward enough to me: Any search, of any property, is legal.
It is. It's distinguished from a regular search though because it detects only illegal drugs. It doesn't detect anything that a person could legitimately expect to be allowed to keep private. It's therefore not a search protected by the 4th Amendment, according to the Court.
In no way is this comparable to looking through the windows of a car. They're searching inside hidden areas of the vehicle. The cops are just using a sniffing device to do the searching for them.
And, because the sniff search detects nothing but drugs, it's not considered a search within the meaning of the 4th Amendment.
You have no reasonable expectation of privacy on the outside of your car.
Irrelevant to the case. What you don't have is a reasonable expectation of keeping illegal drugs private.
That is about as piss poor an excuse for going around a law as I have ever heard.
Fishing for dollars is what it is about.
Does anyone have a list of all the exceptions to the plainly stated bill of rights?
Yeah, we're getting there. Just need to let the technology catch up a bit.
Why wait? If no search for an item or substance than an individual can have no right to possess is illegal, why not let cops do it in person?
Why would 4th Amd protections apply to "all sorts of other things" if those things are legal? The cops aren't going to arrest you for having them, so why the need for protection?
Are there any real numbers on the acuracy of drug dog alerts?
If not.. someone needs to get to work.
In my experiance , dogs have always just been the free ticket to search whenever, where ever.
I'v known several trainers and handlers ... they'll tell you it's a joke. Their dogs alert when they tell them to.
Now I'm not saying that the dogs can't detect drugs ... but if more(or even many
)of the alerts lead to nothing than something ... that tells me the dogs are just being used as an excuse.
What is being found (the oder) is on the outside of the car, not the inside, whether or not it is originating from the inside. The strength of the oder is only a matter of degree as to whether or not the officer needs an aid to further extend his ability to detect it.
In truth a flashlight is more intrusive. The officer is actively radiating energy inside the car to see via what is reflected back from inside the car what otherwise may not be visible.
On the math...
The dog was correct 36% of the time from the numbers you provided.
If 36% of all cars have drugs in them, then the dog alerting on 225 of them would be truly random.
If only 1% of cars have drugs in them then getting it right 36% of the time is much better than random.
In order to know how accurate the dog is, you need to know how many cars contain drugs on average to begin with.
It is further complicated by how many of those cars recently had drugs in them but not at the time they were searched. If a high percentage of the remaining 64% of cars searched had had drugs in them recently then the dog is doing really well on accuracy. Perhaps too well.
On the reasoning:
A dog that "hits" on 145 cars that don't have drugs in them isn't much of drug dog, now is he?
Unless you're one of the false positives.
Argueing with WOD supporters is like talking to a brick wall. I've been on both sides, as an ex-Dallas cop.
I side with you. Plain and simple. We both know the hypocrisy of the criminilization of marijuana.
And leaving it up to lawyers is no solution since once the system gets you, your record, your life, your job and your finances are all at risk.
http://www.leap.cc
It's not about need. It's about what society will allow, whether needed or not. When the Court refers to a "reasonable (or legitimate) expectation of privacy", it's talking about a privacy expectation which society considers reasonable. In fact, a search for 4th Amendment purposes is said to occur only when an expectation of privacy that society is prepared to consider reasonable is infringed. That's essentially the definition of a 4th Amendment search. Anything else--even if it walks talks looks and quacks like a search--ain't a search, per the Court.
Anyway, back to your question, "Why would 4th Amd protections apply to "all sorts of other things" if those things are legal?" The 4th applies because expecting to keep legal activity (or things) private is something which society considers reasonable.
Look, from the Court's decision:
[Referring to the drug dog sniff] Any intrusion on respondent’s privacy expectations does not rise to the level of a constitutionally cognizable infringement.This conclusion is entirely consistent with our recent decision that the use of a thermal-imaging device to detect the growth of marijuana in a home constituted an unlawful search. Critical to that decision was the fact that the device was capable of detecting lawful activity–in that case, intimate details in a home, such as “at what hour each night the lady of the house takes her daily sauna and bath.” The legitimate expectation that information about perfectly lawful activity will remain private is categorically distinguishable from respondent’s hopes or expectations concerning the nondetection of contraband in the trunk of his car. A dog sniff conducted during a concededly lawful traffic stop that reveals no information other than the location of a substance that no individual has any right to possess does not violate the Fourth Amendment.
And this:
Official conduct that does not compromise any legitimate interest in privacy is not a search subject to the Fourth Amendment. We have held that any interest in possessing contraband cannot be deemed legitimate, and thus, governmental conduct that only reveals the possession of contraband compromises no legitimate privacy interest. This is because the expectation that certain facts will not come to the attention of the authorities is not the same as an interest in privacy that society is prepared to consider reasonable.Scary stuff, but there you have it.
My eldest son is a LEO in OK. He's SWAT and gets his buzz breaking down doors and charging in... I quit arguing, with him, long ago!
I get a kick out of the self-appointed arbiters of righteousness herein. They squeak like little shrews, consuming detritus and bile, then spitting it out like their shi'ite don't stink...
Give it time. We'll get there.
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