and smelled weed, but not weed smoke (although i think that is also a grey area, although a different kind of grey)
jb
This gets real fuzzy to me, IIRC from fire inverstigation the smell of marjiuana would be probable cause for a search warrant, the fact that the dog could detect it but not the dog handler would still be a fair hit under a kind of “plain view doctrine” IMHO.
For clarification from my recollection of evidence law, anything that the officer can percieve without going somewhere he needs permission to go would be legally admissible. So if you have a pot plant growing in your front window and he can see it, you’re busted, but the officer could not go into your fenced backyard to look through a back window that lacked a curtain to see the pot plant from there. He was already tresspassing when he saw it therefore, no good.
so, if a human can smell/perceive it. all legal.
but if it’s a non-human, beyond human perception, smelling/perceiving (sp???) there’s no problem?
jb
Right, not just because you were trespassing though, but because he was within the curtilage of your private home. He can trespass in the open field next to your home with the big “no trespassing” sign on it and bust you for pot growing there because you don’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy in it.
Sorry, jb_farley, I was responding to drachillix’s comment. I should have quoted him. What’s you’re question again? I’m not sure I follow.
Sorry, “your question”, not “you’re question”. Pet peeve there.
sigh
Cite?
- Rick
Ok…it looks like a police dog doesn’t count as a full blown human if injured in the course of its duties but a police dog does possess far greater penalties for hurting it than if you did the same injury to just any old dog.
I got the above quote from this page and they have a few other examples.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by SuaSponte *
Cliffy, even if the 4th Amendment was only supposed to protect legal activity (which, actually, it isn’t - it’s supposed to protect individuals going about their lives from state interference without good cause…
[quote]
I disagree – I don’t believe there is any 4th Amendment right to keep criminal activity a secret. Law enforcement is not a game of cops & robbers – cops should be given every advantage possible except the ability to harass the innocent, which is why we require some indication of likely criminal activity before we let them harass people.
Yeah, I agree here – I meant to note this in my original post (which I did obliquely but not directly). When I read the case I was led to believe (either via the text or perhaps the notes afterward in my textbook, I don’t recall) that the cameras were nowhere near that level of sensitivity; essentially the only thing they’d detect was a significant and non-localized heat discharge – the whole wall would look hot. If the cameras could make out a person, then of course their use would be a search.
–Cliffy
I agree with pravnik; it’s not as simple as that. A few years ago there was a Supreme Court case where a cop walking along the sidewalk peered into the window of a basement apartment and saw folks, IIRC, cutting and bagging drugs. There was no probable cause or reasonable suspicion. Although the Supreme Court upheld the convictions (based as they were on this officer’s testimony), it was by no means a clear-cut case and if I’m not mistaken there were multiple concurring opinions and a dissent.
–Cliffy