Can a canine's nose be trusted?
Supreme Court is asked to be skeptical of drug-sniffing dogs
By Robert Barnes, WashPost, Published: October 30
NEW SMYRNA BEACH, Fla. — Aldo the German shepherd and Franky the chocolate Lab are drug-detecting dogs who have been retired to opposite ends of the ultimate retiree state.
But their work is still being evaluated, and on Wednesday it will be before the Supreme Court. The justices must decide whether man’s best friend is an honest broker as blind to prejudice as Lady Justice, or as prone as the rest of us to a bad day at the office or the manipulation of our partners.
The Supreme Court in the past has tended to agree with the first view. Justice John Paul Stevens, now retired, wrote for the court in a 2005 case that a drug-sniffing dog reveals “no information other than the location of a substance that no individual has any right to possess.”
But the two cases on the docket present an aggressive challenge to the notion that a dog’s “alert” to the presence of drugs is enough to legally justify a search of someone’s home or vehicle.
Florida v. Jardines asks whether it was constitutional for Miami-Dade County police, acting on a tip, to bring Franky to Joelis Jardines’s front door. Franky alerted to the smell of marijuana, the police used that to obtain a warrant, and Jardines was arrested on suspicion of turning his home into a “grow house.”
(More here.)
NEW SMYRNA BEACH, Fla. — Aldo the German shepherd and Franky the chocolate Lab are drug-detecting dogs who have been retired to opposite ends of the ultimate retiree state.
But their work is still being evaluated, and on Wednesday it will be before the Supreme Court. The justices must decide whether man’s best friend is an honest broker as blind to prejudice as Lady Justice, or as prone as the rest of us to a bad day at the office or the manipulation of our partners.
The Supreme Court in the past has tended to agree with the first view. Justice John Paul Stevens, now retired, wrote for the court in a 2005 case that a drug-sniffing dog reveals “no information other than the location of a substance that no individual has any right to possess.”
But the two cases on the docket present an aggressive challenge to the notion that a dog’s “alert” to the presence of drugs is enough to legally justify a search of someone’s home or vehicle.
Florida v. Jardines asks whether it was constitutional for Miami-Dade County police, acting on a tip, to bring Franky to Joelis Jardines’s front door. Franky alerted to the smell of marijuana, the police used that to obtain a warrant, and Jardines was arrested on suspicion of turning his home into a “grow house.”
(More here.)
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