High Court Rules Dog Sniff During Traffic Stop OK Without Suspicion Of Drugs

Associated Press ^ | 1/24/2005

[Lazamataz]

The Supreme Court gave police broader search powers Monday during traffic stops, ruling that drug-sniffing dogs can be used to check out motorists even if officers have no reason to suspect they may be carrying narcotics.

In a 6-2 decision, the court sided with Illinois police who stopped Roy Caballes in 1998 along Interstate 80 for driving 6 miles over the speed limit. Although Caballes lawfully produced his driver's license, troopers brought over a drug dog after Caballes seemed nervous.

Caballes argued the Fourth Amendment protects motorists from searches such as dog sniffing, but Justice John Paul Stevens disagreed, reasoning that the privacy intrusion was minimal.

"The dog sniff was performed on the exterior of respondent's car while he was lawfully seized for a traffic violation. Any intrusion on respondent's privacy expectations does not rise to the level of a constitutionally cognizable infringement," Stevens wrote.

In a dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg bemoaned what she called the broadening of police search powers, saying the use of drug dogs will make routine traffic stops more "adversarial." She was joined in her dissent in part by Justice David H. Souter.

[Al Gator]

No Big, you are missing the point completely.

Since when is the policy "if you got nothing to hide, why not let us look" in effect? (I truly HATE this attitude)

Give up a little freedom for security??

Just a minor inconvenience???

This the death of 10,000 cuts.

Those little "inconveniences" add up and at some point, freedom is gone.

Maybe you like getting your crotch sniffed, but I don't.

[Arkinsaw]

Pretty Sad, when the only justices on the CONSERVATIVE side, are Ginsburg, and Souter.

Ain't that the truth. Many conservatives have a blind spot when it comes to this issue.

[t_skoz]

you need to get a grip, there is no violation of any freedom here. Goodness, the man was checked for carrying ILLEGAL cigarettes. what part of illegal do you not understand. He was not pulled from his car, he was not abused in anyway, his car was not stripped or torn apart. The air from his car was sniffed by a dog and the dog reacted to the ILLEGAL cigarettes he had. As I state when the Left gets extreme on rulings; the bill of rights and the constitution is not a suicide pact. This is a minor inconvenience to the average drive and a problem for the criminal... and whats wrong with causing criminals problems?

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you need to get a grip, there is no violation of any freedom here. Goodness, the man was checked for carrying ILLEGAL alcohol. what part of illegal do you not understand. He was not pulled from his car, he was not abused in anyway, his car was not stripped or torn apart. The air from his car was sniffed by a dog and the dog reacted to the ILLEGAL alcohol he had. As I state when the Left gets extreme on rulings; the bill of rights and the constitution is not a suicide pact. This is a minor inconvenience to the average drive and a problem for the criminal... and whats wrong with causing criminals problems?

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THE BILL OF RIGHTS

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The Conventions of a number of the States having, at the time of adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added, and as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government will best insure the beneficent ends of its institution;

-snip-

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/facts/funddocs/billeng.htm

You never read the US Constitution or its Bill Of Rights? Give it a try some time!

[JeffAtlanta]

ad, isn't it. Maybe judges should have read the BILL OF RIGHTS berfore making that decision.

As long as the view on abortion is the primary qualification for nominating a jutice, we are going to continue to get crazy rulings like this.

[Ethan_Allen]

You are free to submit... Is this what Bush means by ''freedom''?... hardly worth fighting for.

...took some of the words out of my mouth. The rest of the words in my mouth would get me banned.

[Lazamataz]

I've lived in Europe. I've been to East Germany long before the wall came down. What you see depicted by Hollywood isn't far from the truth. Wise up.

You wise up. We're headed in that direction, albiet not there yet.

No, never mind, just go back to sleep. Everything's fine. You sleep tight now, y'heah?

[Arkinsaw]

If they could do this with dogs couldn't they do this with any remote detection scheme. They could use chemical sniffers, X-ray machines the whole shebang!

I don't think they can do X-Ray machines because it requires an intrusion of particles on their part. But they can do heat, light, etc. because heat for example comes out of your body and home on its own and becomes open game. Sort of like garbage on the curb is abandoned property. Your heat signatures are essentially abandoned property.

[John Lenin]

How is a dog snffing your car a loss of freedom ? This I got to hear .

[montag813]

I have mixed feelings about this. It seems unfair. But then again, it was a "nervous" Algerian Muslim at the Washington/Canadian border in 1999 which led a heroine border agent to search his trunk and find massive explosives which he was going to use to blow up Los Angeles International Airport. She had no prior suspicions about him.

[NJ_gent]

"Is this what Bush means by ''freedom''?... hardly worth fighting for."

This may be the most damaging type of thing our soldiers have to deal with. You're right - this type of "freedom" isn't worth fighting for and certainly isn't worth dying for. Our boys bust their butts 24/7 in the middle of a sweltering hellhole, all the while being told that they're defending the freedom of Americans. Now what exactly do you tell them when they've done their job and the country they come home to is less free than the one they went off to war to protect because we've collapsed from within?

[Arkinsaw]

you need to get a grip, there is no violation of any freedom here. Goodness, the man was checked for carrying ILLEGAL drugs. what part of illegal do you not understand. He was not pulled from his car, he was not abused in anyway, his car was not stripped or torn apart. The air from his car was sniffed by a dog and the dog reacted to the ILLEGAL drugs he had. As I state when the Left gets extreme on rulings; the bill of rights and the constitution is not a suicide pact. This is a minor inconvenience to the average drive and a problem for the criminal... and whats wrong with causing criminals problems?

Papers please. Why are you concerned if you have nothing to hide comrade?

[JeffAtlanta]

How is a dog snffing your car a loss of freedom ? This I got to hear .

Do you thnk the police would let you do this to their car?

[Arkinsaw]

they have gunpowder sniffing dogs. When they start using those more Freepers will be inconvenienced.

Indeed, suddenly there will be a major constitutional violation. But....the precendent will already have been set and many here will have no one to blame because they were concerned with their own individual liberty, but not the liberty of some folks they didn't like much.

[NJ_gent]

Yes, and until it affects you directly in a serious and terrible way, you're going to stick your head in the sand and sit by while every aspect of freedom we've taken for granted is stripped away from us one by one. You have the right to be willfully naive - at least for the time being.

[robertpaulsen]

"Although Caballes lawfully produced his driver's license, troopers brought over a drug dog after Caballes seemed nervous."

I would be nervous too -- with 282 pounds of marijuana in he trunk.

"The ACLU submitted a friend-of-the-court brief in the case on behalf of Roy Caballes, a 36-year-old Las Vegas resident who was charged with marijuana trafficking in Illinois in 1999. Caballes, who was en route to Chicago, was pulled over by a state trooper for driving six miles above the speed limit. While the trooper was issuing Caballes a warning ticket, a second trooper, who had not been called, arrived and began walking a canine unit around the car. The dog discovered marijuana in the trunk and Caballes was arrested and later sentenced to 12 years in prison."

[palmer]

"nervous" Algerian Muslim

The last word is the only relevant one.

[TKDietz]

The problem is not that a person is found with drugs. The problem is that for every person that is found carrying drugs there are several more who are harassed and treated like criminals.

Look, I live in an area with a stretch of highway that is basically a "drug trap," like you have speed traps in lots of other places. Law enforcement patrol the interstate in great numbers looking for drugs, cash, and other assets to seize. They bring in a ton of money doing this. What they do is find any reason they can to pull over people from out of state, especially rental cars or people with Arizona, California, or New Mexico tags, and especially those occupied by minorities. They pull tons of people over, run the dogs around their cars and search them. I am convinced that in many cases the dogs don't really even alert. I've seen several of the dashboard recordings of these stops that the police make. In most cases the police pull up behind the cars offset by a couple of feet, and the dogs for seem reason almost always alert when they are on the side of the car that is outside of the camera's view. Then they say they have probable cause and start tearing the car apart looking for whatever they might find.

The stops are often for silly reasons. It's usually something like improper lane change or following. These are never caught on camera because they don't turn the cameras on until they are pulling the person over to the side of the road. In so many of these cases I've handled in the past couple of years, the stop has been for following too close on a section of highway where only one lane is open due to road work. Traffic was bumper to bumper and technically everyone was following too close, yet they only pull the guy with the Arizona tags over. And our courts have said that's fine, even if the cop did it on a hunch that the guy might be carrying drugs. As long as there is any valid reason for the stop, it doesn't matter that he lets everyone else go for the same thing and it doesn't matter that the main reason he picked this one car is because he had a hunch that it might be carrying contraband.

It seems like just about every time I drive down that stretch of highway they have somebody pulled over and are going through all of their stuff. In most cases they don't find anything, but these people are held up in their journeys and treated like criminals. That's wrong, but there are places all over America where it happens all the time. And it's getting worse, and will continue to get worse as long as courts keep ignoring the intent of the 4th Amendment.

[Protagoras]

Goodness, the man was checked for carrying ILLEGAL drugs.

Then you won't mind if they go inside your house to check for illegal things. After all, it's illegal things they are looking for.

[Moonman62]

So is this one of those "you have no rights in an automobile" rulings? I do recall that the Supreme Court has never been friendly to individual rights of anyone in a car.

I've never heard of anyone mowing down innocent bystanders while being drunk in their homes. (RV's excluded)