US Supreme Court Asked To Ponder Drug Dog's Sniff

[iscooterliberally]

MIAMI (AP) — Franky the drug dog's supersensitive nose is at the heart of a question being put to the U.S. Supreme Court: Does a police dog's sniff outside a house give officers the right to get a search warrant for illegal drugs, or is the sniff an unconstitutional search?

Florida's highest state court has said Franky's ability to detect marijuana growing inside a Miami-area house from outside a closed front door crossed the constitutional line. The state's attorney general wants the Supreme Court to reverse that ruling.

The justices could decide this month whether to take the case, the latest dispute about whether the use of dogs to find drugs, explosives and other illegal or dangerous substances violates the Fourth Amendment protection against illegal search and seizure.

Many court watchers expect the justices will take up the case.


more...
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iYw9JuQuByCilbIOhlWwwdjay_Hg?docId=513632baebeb450aacd84ff9b052dc0c

It's really not about the dog's sense of smell. It's about the fact that law enforcement uses dogs to violate our 4th ammendment rights.

[jayfish]

1. Why...

Why do they have to bring such important cases in front of this shite court? They are sure to rule for the dog.

[truthisfreedom]

2. I don't think police without a warrant should be able to cross the line from the public sidewalk to

anyone's front door unless they are observing a crime in progress or have received a call requesting assistance. As far as drug/bomb dogs, they're fine in airports and other places we need security. If a drug dog can smell drugs on the sidewalk outside someone's home, there's probably enough drugs inside the place to warrant investigation.

[iscooterliberally]

5. Using dogs to rescue people, find human remains, or dangerous explosives is a good thing.

However, using dogs to search for illegal drugs is just wrong. The dog has certain expectations and they often give off
false positives in order to get a reward. Also, police officers can say, 'oh I think I smell marijuana', and the next thing you know, your car is being torn apart, or in this case the person's home. Apparently dogs in Australia get it wrong
4 out 5 times.

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/animals/sniffer-dogs-get-it-wrong-four-out-of-five-times-20111211-1oprv.html

I my opinion drugs shouldn't have to be 'sniffed for' because they should be legalized for people over 21 in the same way as alcohol and tobacco. Anything short of that is an excuse for the government to violate your freedom. Imagine cops with dogs just walking through your neighborhood and the dog gets a little hungry while he's walking by your house. He wants a treat so he decides to alert his handler to your home so he can get his reward. I don't know if you have ever had the DEA go through your house, but the result is not pretty. You can say, 'well, I don't do drugs so I have nothing to worry about'. Here's a link to some drug war victims that had nothing to do with drugs, but paid the price for our Federal Insanity:

http://www.drugwarrant.com/articles/drug-war-victim/

[immoderate]

12. I think the numbers are similar in the US. That means...

...that if the dog signals, that's an 80% chance that there are NO drugs. So what does probable cause mean?

--imm

[IthinkThereforeIAM]

11. Precedent, precedent, precedent...

... if the judge lets the state's attorney have his way on this, the next thing to be approved is any type of surveillance from the sidewalk, using thermal imaging cameras/scanners, electronic amplified sound surveillance, etc...

It reeks of the camel sticking it's head under the tent. Soon, it wants the whole tent, not just a little peeky poo.

[ThomThom]

14. or are they hitting on the neighbors' wafting over

or somebody came to the door with residue on their hand and left it behind...
have much does it take to trigger the dog, tenths of grams or pounds?

[iscooterliberally]

16. It only takes a treat to trigger the dog.

The drug scents are only reminders to the dog that treats are near. Once the dog puts two and two together,
they start to sit whether or not drugs are present. Therefore they are only a tool used to violate our rights as Americans.
That's why the dogs are wrong 80 percent of the time.

[ThomThom]

27. 80%? WOW

not good

[XemaSab]

3. I know!

Why don't we end the bullshit war on drugs, or at the very least legalize pot?

[iscooterliberally]

6. We need to end the whole damn thing.

The entire Controlled Substances Act needs to be overturned. It's really a silly name for this law since it accomplishes the exact opposite of it's name. The Controlled Substances Act puts all the control in criminal hands. It's just like The Patriot Act, the most unpatriotic piece of shit legislation that congress could have come up with. War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery...etc...

[Uncle Joe]

9. I agree, current drug policy is counterproductive, dysfunctional, draconian, racist, corruptive and

continously invasive.

[duhneece]

8. Amen

Let's treat addiction and drug use from a public health perspective instead of a criminal justice perspective...then, the dog question would be moot.

[Gringostan]

28. Way too rational; and I agree 100%! NT

[Politicalboi]

4. This is another reason

To make MJ legal, or only train the dogs to smell Meth labs, or explosives. Or exploding Meth labs. LOL!

[NathanTheGreat]

7. I'm not sure

I'm not sure how they're going to rule...but in my honest opinion, the moment that drug dog stepped onto that person's property, that constituted an illegal search.

If they could get him to mark positive from the street or sidewalk, no arguments here...but the police were not invited onto the property, and thus should be considered unwelcome.

[24601]

29. Stepping onto property does not constitute a search in any stretch of the word. When the police are

looking for a missing child, and they go through the neighborhood ringing doorbells and asking people if they have seen the child, that is not a search. If someone answers the door and the police push their way into the house and look for the child - then that is a search.

When they ring the doorbell and a person answers - and while resident and police are standing at the front door, a child's cry for help comes from inside the house, the police likely then have circumstances where a search is lawful without a warrant. Not all searches require warrants of course - but for the ones that do, the legal standard for the warrant is probable cause.

The courts also have held that a stop and frisk is less intrusive than a search and requires only reasonable suspicion, not the probable cause a warrant requires.

[LibDemAlways]

10. My daughter's high school brought dogs into classrooms unannounced to sniff

for drugs. Students were ordered to leave all of their possessions at their desks and go outside during the dog raids. Seems to me that was probably a violation of the kids' 4th amendment rights but the school's position was that since the kid's property was on school property it could be searched without a warrant.

[iscooterliberally]

13. It's a war on young people.

In my neighborhood the cops cruise around and pull over all the highschool aged drivers. It's awful what they do now. The school should not be doing these types of searches. You should complain to the school board. Especially since the dogs get it wrong 4 out of 5 times. If adults could buy drugs in the same way that they buy alcohol and tobacco there would be no need for such oppression.

[DRoseDARs]

25. So the school's position is that they are foreign soil and thus not subject to US law? Like Petoria?

Yeah, it absolutely WAS and violation of their 4th Amendment rights though sadly, the under-18 crowd lies in a grey area of constitutional law. Youth advocates/civil rights organizations are constantly fighting this kind of fuckery. At the *very* least, they need parental consent before doing this to students though they shouldn't be doing it at all because it is still a 4th Amendment violation; children aren't property or 3/5ths of a person. Next time they pull this, try to have a lawyer and another angry-but-calm* parent or two to go with you (Unannounced in kind... yes, an ambush. Don't give them warning and thus time to prepare some bullshit platitudes.) so that the school can explain on the record their sovereignty to the group of you in-person. Often, the public shaming of school officials is enough to get bad policy removed so you might not even need to bother with a class-action lawsuit. School districts are none too keen on being sued, but bad press from the parents of their students can be much worse. Lawyers dully blathering law to each other is less scary than pissed-off parents venting to local media.



*Seriously, keep your cool. If they get to a point of asking you to leave school grounds, especially if they seek to involve law enforcement (irony?), leave calmly and as ordered (don't turn it into an Occupy event) but sign off with, "Well if you won't answer our questions, maybe you'll answer the media's..." That's a dirty move but absolutely justified and appropriate in the face of stonewalling. School administrators don't like the media sniffing out their dirty laundry and the media is all to happy to do so if it means there might be a scoop in it. Your aim is to affect policy change in the most expedient and legal means possible to you. The school district's is to avoid a costly court battle.

[Warren DeMontague]

15. BUT WE MUST STOP TEH DRUGGGGGGGZZZ!!!111!!!!

Nothing- DO YOU HEAR ME, NOTHING!!!- is more important than remaining ever-vigilant in ensuring that no one, anywhere, is getting high.

"Bill of Rights" - pah!

[Hosnon]

17. I hope to God the Justices have tech-savvy advisers.

Otherwise they better tread lightly here. Technology is very soon going to allow unprecedented levels of surveillance without noticeably intruding on privacy.

I'd wager my penis that the Founders would have thought that using nanobots to sniff the air hundreds of yards from a building for trace evidence of drug users inside - without a warrant - is not a power possessed by the government.

That scenario is less than 50 years away (and probably less than 25).

IIRC, existing case law follows something like a "Human Senses+" theory: a warrant is necessary if the police cannot use their natural senses (with a bit of reasonable help, e.g., binoculars).

[SmittynMo]

18. My opinion is this is illegal as hell.

Aren't there other issues they cam tackle? This is friggin ridiculous.

[DeSwiss]

20. K&R

[cstanleytech]

21. Here is a question........

What if it was a case of say a detector built being able to detect a distinct scent that marijuana and only marijuana? Would the "detection" be legal or would it be an illegal search even if the "scent" had drifted to where the detector was?

[iscooterliberally]

22. I don't think there would be a difference.

Whether or not the decector is a machine, a dog's nose, or a cop's nose. They are still violating our 4th ammendment rights on this. The government is over reaching here, and they need to be stopped.

[cstanleytech]

24. If the police see someone through a window though shoot someone in a home (yet they hear nothing) is

that to a violation? In the case of the "scent" isnt it similar if its an issue of it only being detected because the scent is leaving the premises?

[Dragonbreathp9d]

26. Despite my feelings on maryj

I tend to think that this is much more of "reasonable cause" than a cop sayin he smells it (I have long hair and Podunk bumfuck Texas cops have on two occasions searched my entire car without me having had nor had smoked anything within in over 2 years).
However, entry to a house probable cause is a little different than car search.
Morally I know it's fucked- legally though- that's a bit difficult

[cthulu2016]

30. The drugs are in plain view...

The drugs are in plain view... if you are a dog. (Readily detactable by the senses without entering the property)

Unfortunately dogs are not able to be real police officers able to testify in court and face cross-examination, so who cares what the fuck they think?