Let’s say you’re driving and you’ve been stopped because of a broken tail light. The cop happens to have a drug sniffing dog in his car and asks you to wait while the dog walks around your vehicle to check for drugs. You happen to match the profile of someone who uses illegal drugs. Since you have been asked by the cop to wait I assume that if your drive off that will likely lead to you being stopped again and arrested.
Is a trained dog able to detect certain illegal drugs hidden in your car from outside your car if your windows are up?
Does the cop need your permission to do this? I assume not since there is no search of your vehicle actually happening.
If the dog ‘hits’ on your car can the cop then order you out, detain you and let the dog go into your car to locate the drugs?
The Supreme Court addressed issues #2 and #3 inIllinois v. Caballes, 543 US 405 (2005), by holding that the use of a sniff dog to locate drugs during a lawful traffic stop does not violate an individual’s Fourth Amendment right from unreasonable search and seizure.
Incidentally, the case was also at the root of an infamously bad oral argument before the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. I still cringe when I listen to this.
Some other tests and court cases have shown, however, that drug sniffing dogs are not that good sometimes. Some also respond to subtle clues from the handlers to indicate whatever the handler wants them to say. So if they want to search your car, an indication from a drug dog is probable cause. If they find nothing, well, oops sorry. If they do find something, see, the dog was right.
(A college acquaintance once told us the story of him and his buddy coming back to Canada from the USA. As they got not far from the border, they realized they still had a sizable amount of pot. Rather than risk the search, they parked on a side country road for the afternoon and smoked it all. The car definitely smelled of it. They got to the border, were pulled aside, and searched. He said it was hilarious. The guard was saying “you might as well tell us where it’s hidden, the dog will find it soon anyway.” Meanwhile, thought the window, he could see the very confused dog inside the car frantically waving his head and turning circles because the entire interior reeked just as bad in every direction. …after a while and no find, they were allowed to go.)
Yes. Maybe not with 100% reliability, but dogs have pretty amazing noses.
Cops themselves are allowed to look through your windows to examine the interior of your car without actually entering it. If contraband is in plain view, then they have probable cause and can now enter your vehicle without your permission for a more thorough search. Moral of the story is if you’re transporting illegal drugs, your safest bet is to put them in the trunk; you can then refuse to consent to a search of your vehicle (until/unless the officer indicates he has PC).
Cops can also run a drug-sniffing dog around the exterior of your car without your permission and without a warrant. Which means that even if you’ve hidden the drugs in your trunk, you’re SOL if the officer happens to have a dog with him (or is suspicious enough make you wait while he calls in a drug-sniffing dog).
Just like a cop seeing drugs through the window, a dog smelling drugs from the outside is regarded as PC for a search; at that point an officer can search the interior of your car without your permission.
Thanks everyone. Ignorance fought. And in case you’re wondering, no, I don’t transport or use illegal drugs so this really isn’t an issue for me personally.
Good luck proving it. Pot doesn’t really affect your performance on a field sobriety test, and they could take a blood sample, but most likely won’t unless there is probable cause like a failed sobriety test or actual possession of drugs or drug paraphernalia. Not sure about the specifics of Canadian law enforcement, but that’s why you rarely see DUIs issued for marijuana in the US.
True story… I once worked at a U.S. Naval base as a contractor and one day I was cutting the grass outside one of the gates. When I drove my little golf cart back in the gate, a couple Marines had a drug-sniffing dog search my cart. It was very interested in my pockets so they had me turn them out. I had a brand-name wrapped cookie in there that it wanted.
To be fair, the dog was still in training. But I guess even drug sniffers get hungry.
There is another very recent case about drug dogs during car stops. In Rodriguez v US it was found that since the officer had finished the traffic stop and wrote the ticket it was unreasonable for him to prolong the stop by having the dog sniff around the car. It seems bizarre to me that if the doc was used before the ticket was written it probably would have been ok. In most of the case law dealing with investigative detention the court had been hesitant to give a bright line rule as to a time limit that would be reasonable.
In New Jersey the answer to #3 would be that if there was a hit consent to search would be requested. If there is no consent the car gets towed until a search warrant is obtained. Such things are more strict here.
Here you go. 56% misses, 44% hits. Not very surprisingly, a 92% miss rate with Hispanic drivers. Either the dogs are racist, or they’re cuing off the handler’s bias. A Magic 8 Ball would be more reliable.
Sadly, the courts will allow cops to search your vehicle based on nothing more than the “Clever Hans” effect. The drug war reminds me of those octogenarians who careen through crowds while thinking the accelerator pedal is the brake. We keep pressing harder and harder and all the while people are being hurt and killed.
As mentioned, good luck proving it. The law is explicit on the breathalyzer (refusing one is a criminal offence) but I don’t think they can demand a blood sample without serious reasons (warrant?) unless there’s been a serious accident and the driver cannot give a breath sample.
As opposed to the Land of the Free, where I recall a recent case where a Minnesota park Ranger (?) was able to demand a blood sample from an NHL hockey player for “boating under the influence” because he admitted that he was taking prescribed drugs for pain. I would think in any situation, demanding a blood test would be a very extreme invasion of privacy relegated to serious cases like accidents causing serious injury or death - not a “gotcha” that can be demanded for Boating While Black.
Makes sense, really. Legally, they stopped him to write a ticket for an infraction. The ticket is complete, he should be free to go, unless they have a different probable cause to stop and hold him. “I think I’ll search your car” or DWB is not probable cause. Once the ticket is written, he’s in the same situation as anyone else on the highway and if the police choose to stop and detain him further, they need a valid reason to do so. They cannot randomly stop people just to do drug sniffs.
Presumably, if they stall to make time for the drug sniff or wait for the dog to arrive (and it can be proven), that too is additional detention and requires probable cause?
My father-in-law was career Navy… a corpsman, then a chief career counselor. Both of which would have you at sea pretty regularly.
One Christmas season, his care package from my mother-in-law was intercepted by drug-sniffing dogs.
They hit on cookies she had baked him. An old German recipe (since she’s Kansas Mennonite stock)… Pfeffernüsse.
I’m guessing that the mutts hit on the spices in the cookie (lots of good sweet aromatics like cardamom and anise seed), and not because my in-laws’ family always referred to these cookies as “dog biscuits”.
It depends on the state. In some the implied consent law only covers breath samples. For blood you either need consent or a warrant. In other states, I know Pennsylvania is one, their implied consent law states breath or blood.
The level of proof is a reasonable articulable suspicion not probable cause. That is the same for a car stop and for using a dog. You don’t need PC to make a car stop you need RAS. In Caballes it was ruled that they can use a drug dog during any motor vehicle stop as long as it does not take an undue amount of time. In the Rodriquez case he said he had RAS. That did not change because he wrote the ticket. He had RAS, walked the dog around the car, then wrote the ticket the conviction would stand. Instead he had RAS, got the ticket writing out of the way, then walked the dog around. None of the other factors changed.
Again the burden of proof is not PC it is Reasonable Articulable Suspicion. With RAS you can detain for a “reasonable” amount of time. Without you can’t. There is no bright line rule for how long a reasonable amount of time is.
You do understand that is not close to being a scientific study. The results only show where contraband wasn’t found. That doesn’t mean there was nothing to smell. Smells, especially strong ones like marijuana, can linger for a long time. As someone who has trusted his life to the ability of dogs to smell explosives I believe in their effectiveness. They are not 100% and it certainly isn’t total proof that there is contraband but no one says it is. It is probable cause which is much lower than total proof.
Loach, I’m not a bit surprised that explosive sniffing dogs are reliable. I have no doubt about the abilities of the dogs. It’s the handlers that I don’t trust. The handlers of explosive sniffing dogs have skin in the game, the handlers of drug sniffing dogs do not. The drug sniffing dogs pick up the cues of the handlers after the handlers decide who is carrying drugs. Then when they don’t find any drugs they haul out a line of bullshit about “Well, they were probably carrying drugs yesterday, or the day before, or the dog was confused by residue on the money they were carrying”.
It’s just an excuse to allow police to conduct searches of anyone they want, that’s why 92% of the Hispanics searched after the dogs “alerted” on drugs weren’t carrying drugs. It’s a scam. It’s stop and frisk with dogs.
And yet I have seen many times when the dog doesn’t hit and it goes no further. You are bringing your own biases into this which belongs in a different forum. A scientific study would eliminate hits from drugs that are no longer there from true false hits. Of those 92% how many recently had drugs in the car? 5%? 25%? 90%? You have no idea and neither do I. In order for it to get that far there already has to be reasonable articulable suspicion. I have been present on car searches where there is a cloud of smoke still hanging over the car and the smell is so strong it made me gag. No drugs found. All used up before contact. It happens all the time. Marijuana smell stays with a car a long time. Just like drunks don’t realize how strong the booze smells coming off them pot smokers are often nose blind to how much it smells. It is not unreasonable for the dog to pick up on that.
Right, this is an interesting case. Rodriguez seemed to hold that if a drug dog sniff “prolongs” a traffic stop beyond the necessary administrative work (checking license, insurance, etc.) then it is unconstitutional.
It raises the issue that pretty much any drug dog sniff would prolong the stop. (The majority went out of its way to criticize the dissent and say that it didn’t matter if it occurred during or after). I suppose if there was a two man officer team where one was processing the license and the other was conducting the drug dog sniff it would be okay, but if you take the case of a lone officer, it seems that a sniff would prolong the stop and be unconstitutional.
[QUOTE=Rodriguez v. United States]
The critical question, then, is not whether the dog sniff occurs before or after the officer issues a ticket, as JUSTICE ALITO supposes, post, at 2–4, but whether conducting the sniff “prolongs”—i.e., adds time to—“the stop,” supra, at 6.
[/QUOTE]
Wouldn’t most drug dog sniffs “prolong” the stop and therefore be unconstitutional?
Be careful if you have Colorado plates and are driving out of state. My brother does not use MJ. But was he ever given the whole nine yards when pulled over in Indiana for ‘Improper turn signal use’ He didn’t let it blink enough times (or long enough distance) when changing lanes.
Cop said he smelled MJ. Um, no he couldn’t have. Two hours later, after they finally got a dog on scene, nope, no MJ here. Have a nice day.
