Mind reader are we?
Gee maybe gasp he knows more about Ohio law than you and gasp perhaps you might be in violation of it?
They are accurate enough to give probable cause for a search.
Why wouldn’t a cop be able to use infrared goggles?
Because the Supreme Court says so?
Kyllo v United States, 533 U.S. 27 (2001).
Well not exactly on point, but pretty close. As our good friend ‘Fat Tony’ Scalia says
Exactly what does the balance between innocent people imprisoned and bad guys taken down have to be before a law fails this balancing test?
Anywhere from 33–80% of our bills are contaminated with trace amounts of cocaine.
As for the issue at hand, as a non-drug using and law-abiding citizen, I do find problem with the Supreme Court ruling. For me, it tips the scale on what is and isn’t probable cause.
FTR I don’t smoke pot now but did quite a bit once upon a time. I advocate pot prohibition for myself but not for others necessarily.
My objection to the SCOTUS’ decision is that it gives enforcement the upper hand completely. Why do I think that’s a bad thing? Because for certain types of laws, IMO, the expectation was never that the effect of the law could be fully carried out. Alcohol prohibition made it illegal to sell and, in some cases, possess beverage alcohol, but it was never expected that the liquor trade would be fully extirpated. Similarly it would be ludicrous to expect that, as a result of the CSA and other anti-narcotic legislation, that all use or possession of MJ would be stopped. Instead, there is or was a grey area where a law might be broken, but without obvious disturbance of the peace or other visible, negative outcome, the perpetrator would be left alone, especially if in an inviolable sphere like his own home. For example, if someone obtains pot and uses it at home, but you’d never know it, then there’d be no probable cause for arrest or search even though the law is being broken. On the other hand, if there was evidence of dealing and production, for instance because of a steady stream of visitors out of the ordinary, then that would be probable cause for a search, and that more or less satisfied everyone because it was the dealers that we wanted to catch. But now with the prospect of infrared vision being trained on a home, or bloodhounds being brought to sniff the home, just like the Mechanical Hound in Fahrenheit 451 it seems like there may soon be no sphere of privacy left.
I have no problem in this case; I also disagree with [i/]Kyllo v* whatever. The essential problem here is that I see no problem at all with police using surrpogate or enhanced sense device in place of their own, so long as they do not deploy ones that attempt to bypass the bounds of my home illegally. In Kyllo, the court said, in short:
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The police are limited to human senses (why? an accident of evolution? god’s plan?). Even for things such as heat waves or smells humans can’t detect which exit the house as much as your garbage or the light rays that exit your windows. Worse yet, from my view, the cops might have cause if they noticed heat waves coming from your garage or something all day long. it just seems very haphazard.
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And the police can’t use these items because other people don’t use them often. I admit, I’ve read that last part three times and it still sounds like the justices were basically just bullshitting their way through the opinion, trying to find a way to justify what they already decided.
I’m not saying its a bad idea. I’d probably prefer it that way to the absolute alternative. But I also disagree with the entire notion of an unwritten “right to privacy”. I dislike laws that aren’t written down by a legislative (not bloody-fucking judicial) body and I dislike vague and/or irrational rules. And Kyllo is both.
I have no idea what the new ruling does to Kyllo. The use of police dogs in random car ticketings will be quite limited. Those dogs are damned expensive to train, after all.
So, after everything I guess I didn’t really come down for anyone’s side and I managed to insult the Supreme Court.
Kyllo, is, IMHO, a right decision for wrong and very dangerous reasons. It is one of Scalia’s trademark attempts to rewrite 40-odd years of constitutional decisions. This one is kind of an attempt to get rid of Katz and place the emphasis of 4th jurisprudence firmly on the home.
As regards this case, cars have always been treated very differently, even when they are a persons home as well. I am not sure I agree with this decision (need to read it fully), but I am certainly not surprised by it.
Wow, isn’t this just a tempest of misinformation and paranoia.
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Narcotic Detection dogs RARELY have ‘false hits’ sometimes they MISS, but very rarely do they hit on something OTHER than what they’re trained to hit on. If you had weed in your pocket two days ago, a good K-9 can still smell it there.
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Dogs are impartial. They won’t notice the “odor” of an intoxicating substance on you if it isn’t there.
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Smelling like drugs isn’t illegal, however If you have money that has the scent of narcotics to a K9, you’re likely to get tossed and sent on your way (if you don’t have any actual drugs) with a little embarassment. Sure it sucks, but it’s the price we’re paying for this idiotic war on drugs.
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This ruling doesn’t give officers any more power than already exists, it just removes the need for creativity to dream up the PC necessary to search, a skill that any cop worth his or her salt has long since mastered.
Bottom line is, police are going to use dogs to their advantage because the majority of taxpaying idiots (read: citizens) in and of this great nation don’t care about people who do drugs. Period. And frankly, I’m not sure I do either; you take the risk, you gamble with the result.
As someone who back in the day was followed for several miles by a police officer for committing the crimes of a) driving in Texas b) at night c) with long hair*, I dislike any ruling which gives the police more power than they already have. What frosts me in particular, though, about this ruling is the patent absurdity that bringing a dog up to you and/or your car is not a “search.” Of course it’s a search. Any fool not wearing a black robe with lifetime tenure can see it’s a search. The police are actively using a tool to seek particular items; how is that not a search?
It’s the circumstances of the supposedly-not-a-search that are particularly grotesque:
So all of you who feel intimidated by police officers and who hang those little pine tree things off your rear-view mirror, you’re next.
*and when the asshole finally pulled me over, falsely claiming that I was “weaving,” among the first words out of his mouth were that he could smell alcohol on me, an amazing feat since I had not had an alcoholic beverage for several days prior to the incident
I would add a clause to that: If you aren’t breaking the law, and the authorities are uncorruptible…
Whadayano?
First time for everything, I guess.
I’m 100% in agreement with Reeder here.
Fucking bullshit police state. :mad:
But the courts aren’t supposed to just go along with everything the police might wish to do. The courts are there partly to protect the rights of unpopular minorities, even, in some cases, criminal defendants, or potential defendants.
On the other hand, how does a judge determine that the dog smelled something other than by asking the (possibly not so impartial) police officer?
Imagine the following court scene:
officer: my dog smelled something so I searched the car
defendant: your dog was sitting there the whole time doing nothing.
dog: woof
If the dog was capable of testifying in court or they used a device (instaed of the dog) that produced a paper trail that could corroberate the officer’s story there would be far less potential for unreasonable search. As it is this just gives law enforcement a loophole to search anybody so long as they have a dog with them.
People, people. All you have to do is donate to the PBA, get that little sticker, and you’re set. Freaking out about nothing…
What I want to know is how long they can detain you while waiting for the drug sniffing dog to show up to not search you.
I’m still a bit unclear as how using a drug sniffing dog does not constitute a search. It’s a dog trained to sniff out (or search) for drugs. What exactly did the cop say?
“Well, I was taking my dog out to go to the bathroom while my partner was performing a routine traffic stop… I thought Fluffy might be more comfortable peeing next to the stopped car. Next thing I know, Fluffy goes nuts. :eek: What a kowinkydink.”
How is using a dog trained to search for something not a search for something? 
Does anyone else find it amusing that two Wolves have showed up to post in a thread about a dog? 
There’s another thread on this decision in GD which is a little more sober (as one might expect). I think it’s a good decision. Harborwolf, the reason it’s not a search (in my and the Supreme Court’s opinion) is because the use of the dog is not particularly likely to lead to the uncovering of embarassing but perfectly legal information about the driver. The 4th Amendment is not meant to protect criminals engaging in criminal activity, it’s meant to protect the law-abiding who wish to keep some of their legal activities private. Therefore, when an investigative technique elicits information about illegal activity but never or almost never would elicit information about potentially embarassing legal activity, it isn’t what the 4th Amendment is meant to protect.
–Cliffy
This analysis, OTOH, is absurd. Whether there exists a general right or privacy or not, Martin, the 4th Amendment specifically delineates when the State can examine a person’s private effects. Whether that’s the extent of the right or privacy or just a part of it, the restrictions on searches are not judicially created.
–Cliffy
I agree. I often think Scalia has the right idea, but I think his decisions make no sense at all. And sometimes its downright wierd!
Legally, the dog is just check to see if anything is coming off of you. Similarly, police can take your trash if you leave it out past your driveway (since you’ve presumably relinquished ownership). It’s a search if they go into a protected place and look around or have th dog sniff around in there. If the dog happens to be nearby, goes nuts, they then have probably cause for a search.