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.

[NJ_gent]

"As I state when the Left gets extreme on rulings; the bill of rights and the constitution is not a suicide pact."

As I state whenever someone bring up this ridiculous phrase: "let's think about this for a moment - a group of farmers, lawyers, and businessmen sign their names to an open declaration of treason against the Crown, which controls the largest empire and the most powerful military the world has ever seen, and whose punishment for treason is generally death, and it's *NOT* a suicide pact?! I just love that one. Had the revolution turned out the way that any logically thinking person would have expected (it certainly hadn't completely succeeded just yet - see: War of 1812), every man whose name appeared on that Constitution would have been executed to serve as an example of what happens to traitors. These men put liberty far above their personal safety in the face of nearly certain death - but hey, it's not a suicide pact or anything."

[sam_paine]

we'll continue to stand up for freedom.

[Guffaw]

I picture The Village People standing up and shouting. Lemme know which rampart you'll be defending and I'll come haul ammo for you. LOL.

[rottweiller_inc]

There were 2 cops that planted drugs...and all they got was a charge of conspiricy to violate civil rights.

[sam_paine]

#340

[JoeV1]

What freedoms have any of you lost? If you are speeding you are stopped. If you are lucky you get only a warning, if you have drugs in your vehicle or on your person then you are committing a crime. Why on earth should ANYONE be permitted to slide because he wasn't sporting a flashing red sign on his vehicle saying he had the drugs? So the dog sniffed and the motorist was caught. He was breaking the law.

As far as I;m concerned the police can stop me every freakin' day as long as they are trying to stop crime. A sniffing dog would find no drugs in my vehicle because I don't use them. To believe that money in my wallet that had drug remnants on it would send me to jail is absurd.

[Huck]

Idiots.

[skr]

Makes one wonder if the air freshener was covering up a recent sampling of the trunk's contents. If a two-legged law officer's nose detects marijuana, is that counted as probable cause to search a car?

[Huck]

rethink some type of term limits or mandatory retirement age. These justices live in their own little worlds and have no one to answer to.

It won't make a difference. The gubmint is made up of Ivy league holier than thou statist scumbags. What difference does it make how long they work? The replacement will be just as bad or worse.

[Doctor Stochastic]

You are committing the Socialist Worker's Party fallacy of equationg lack of economic means with governmental restraints. Most people don't have the "freedom" (as you call it) to counter Rush Limbaugh or Dianne Sawyer. (Actually, they have the freedom, just not the money.)

[NJ_gent]

"However, we have to give cops the tools to do what we task them to do. We have then to hold them to a high standard for how they use those tools."

I am generally very supportive of police. In most situations, if it's the cop's word against the suspect's, I'm looking over the evidence to see where the 'suspect' made the mistake that's going to get him convicted. However, because of this inherent trust I have for police, I do also hold them to a very high standard and I tend to come down extremely hard when they make a mistake or make an on-purpose mistake (obviously more so for the latter). I think you give the police the tools they want which don't have high potential for abuse and which flow from the teachings of the Constitution, and if that's not enough to catch certain criminals than my response is simply that it'll have to do. You'll never see me berate a cop who didn't get a bad guy because of laws in place that prevented him from doing so. At the same time, you won't necessarily see me berate the law that prevented him from getting that bad guy. As I'm sure any cop knows, there are times where doing things the right way means that the criminals win that round.

And I have nothing but the highest respect for a police officer who goes out there every day doing their job the way it's supposed to be done.

[rushfreedom]

I agree with you Bigs.

Lets remember a few facts. The driver was stopped for speeding. If the officer saw a bag of drugs hanging out of the door, he has "probable cause". Would anyone disagree with this? In this case his trained dog smells drugs, he now has "probable cause". Both cases are the same. I see no violation in freedom.

Think about a Meth house. If you can smell the production of Meth then you have "probable cause" to search it. You would not argue that a home owners rights are violated in this case would you?

Those that do not agree with this ruling should think again. When I read this thread I thought I was reading the DU!

Does anyone know who was defending the druggie? Was it the ACLU?

[Blood of Tyrants]

And Freeper robertpausen, authoritarion extrordinaire, hater of freedom, and amateur Brownshirt will say that the government has the authority under the interstate commerce clause to do any damned thing it likes.

[MileHi]

It's not just regulation but real economic freedom. In real terms I am freer than my ancestor farmers were during the dust bowl. That's obvious. They had no freedom to travel, write blogs, argue political dissent, petition the government, publish, marry for happiness, etc.

They NEVER got paid a day in their life to be sick like I can.

All well and good, but Government didn't give you any of those things. I real terms, citizens lives in this country have never been so regulated or government so overbearing as today.

I don't want to lose any of this either, and I think the dog sniffing ruling (and current attempts in the Texas Lege to get DWI checkpoints) are horrendous and need to be pushed back.

Well, on that point we certainly agree.

[HamiltonJay]

Court made the right call.... sorry guys. You get pulled over for speeding and someone smells wrotting flesh from your trunk, better believe it not a violation to notice.

Suspects do not "own the air" and have no expectation of privacy to it. Dog sniffs around a vehicle.. and detects drugs... not illegal or a 4th ammendment violation.

[NJ_gent]

"If I'm driving along and violating no law and the cops set up checkpoints in order to have dogs sniff my car, the situation is quite different."

Interestingly enough, I wonder if you could argue against a police dog search at a checkpoint. If we assume, for a moment, that a checkpoint is not a seizure as such, then this comment by Stevens would seem to go toward making a dog search an infringement. Consider:

"The dog sniff was performed on the exterior of respondent's car while he was lawfully seized for a traffic violation."

Stevens seems to be saying that the search by the dog was ok because it was done while the individual operating the car was lawfully seized. In other words, he's done something wrong and has been seized as part of the policing process. When you're going through a checkpoint, I can see an argument that you're not seized at all because there's no presumption of wrongdoing. (Yes, you and I know the reality is the exact opposite, but this is the BS logic they used to justify a crap decision).

[rushfreedom]

Yes the ACLU was helping to defend the druggie - Roy Caballes. I hope everyone that disagrees with this ruling knows they are agreeing with the ACLU. The defenders of Druggies.

["The deployment of drug-sniffing dogs cannot be justified by the legitimate investigative needs of a routine traffic stop," said Steven R. Shapiro, Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union. "A trained dog will add nothing to the evidence of a broken tail-light nor assist in determining how fast a motorist was driving. It is, however, an invitation to racial profiling"

The ACLU submitted a friend-of-the-court brief in the case on behalf of Roy Caballes...]

Ref to:
http://www.aclu.org/court/court.cfm?ID=17003&c=286

[NJ_gent]

""Sorry, sir. In this jurisdiction the detection of any alcohol in the vehicle constitutes a violation of open container laws. You'll have to prove to the court that your deodorant has alcohol in it. Zero tolerance, sir. It's for everybody's good.""

Not to mention your mouthwash, cologne, aftershave, your wife's cough syrup and a bunch of other things.

[m1-lightning]

So.... should we be complaining that there's a possibility that cops can plant evidence or should we complain that the laws aren't tough enough on them?

[NJ_gent]

"Even better, some people recently figured out how to tell what you're typing by the sound the keyboard makes. They only need to know who manufactured your keyboard and point a sound-detecting laser at your window."

TEMPEST's work goes past such limitations. You can reconstruct the image on a monitor by studying the interference pattern it generates. Thus, the words on your screen are reconstructed as you type them regardless of your keyboard and without using a laser which may constitute a nasty 'intrusion of privacy' in a court of law. NSA's been briefing corporations on how to protect and shield themselves from this sort of thing for quite a while. How long before the actual detection technology is shared with the FBI and local law enforcement who can begin using it at will?