Supreme Court Rules Extending Traffic Stop for Dog Sniff Unconstitutional [pdf]

You're saying the Supreme Court should create a loophole for the officer to dilly dally just so the dog can arrive? That seems unreasonable.

Even if both the Greens and Libertarians still lost, the Democrats and Republicans would have been shocked out of complacency and rushing to end the war on drugs.

The problem is, everyone's voting for evil because they fear the other evil is greater.... yet there were two "Good" candidates running!

What I read said, right in the first paragraph:

>After Struble attended to everything relating to the stop, including, inter alia, checking the driver’s licenses of Rodriguez and his passenger and issuing a warning for the traffic offense, he asked Rodriguez for permission to walk his dog around the vehicle. When Rodriguez refused, Struble detained him until a second officer arrived. Struble then retrieved his dog, who alerted to the presence of drugs in the vehicle. The ensuing search revealed methamphetamine. Seven or eight minutes elapsed from the time Struble issued the written warning until the dog alerted.

So, the cop did ask in the beginning. When consent was denied the officer delayed.

Alito's dissent states that a preliminary dog sniff will become an ordinary incident as a result of this ruling. It will be the new standard procedure for K-9 officers who initiate traffic stops. A future Officer Struble will simply get the dog out first for everyone he stops, post Rodriguez and a bit of officer training.

Officers that don't have a dog in the back will still have to establish reasonable suspicion to call in a K-9 sniff, just as they did before the ruling. So I can't see this ruling having an impact for longer than it takes to re-train officers.

> Dog sniffs are “sui generis,” the Court has held—they’re unique in that they don’t reveal any information about the contents of the object sniffed except the presence of contraband, as to which you have no privacy right. Thus, if the police have a dog ready to sniff your car when they pull you over for a traffic violation, you have no basis for objecting to the sniff. And, of course, if the dog does alert to the car, that is probable cause, so the police can then search the whole car. That’s what the officer wanted to do with Jay-Z, but the K-9 unit wasn’t there when he was pulled over, and was late arriving.

That is, if the threaten to run your license plate, that's fine because it's legal (even if it would find something bad). But if they threaten to ram your car or take your kids, then any consent you gave would be (IIRC) inadmissible as being under duress.

This ruling would suggest that the K9 threat falls under the latter.

Cases absolutely do get thrown out all the time because of searches which occur subsequent to a detention without probable cause. I just saw it happen last week.

I think the basis of consent ought to involve limitations of scope, such that discovery of a minor crime during the fruitless investigation of a major one should be treated differently. We want people to be cooperative with the police so as to minimize the incidence of violent crimes like the one the state troopers originally arrived to investigate. It's understandable that a neighbor got worried and called 911 (although we'll never know if the neighbor was genuinely worried or just irritated by the sexy sex noise). It's absolutely understandable that police would want to verify that no violence was going on after receiving such a report, even with the reasonable alternative explanation of sexual activity.

It's much harder to argue that McGacken's 10 year prison sentence has made society any better off. The cost of trying and imprisoning him may well exceed the social cost of his production (and presumable sale) of marijuana, but they have definitely reduced the incentive of people to cooperate with police investigating other crimes. To me this is a prime example of how 'the life of the law has not been logic, [but] experience' - the law has been consistently applied, but the result seems extremely unfair and may even have had negative economic utility.

Alito and Thomas' dissents cite some fairly compelling evidence that the officer did have reasonable suspicion: the vehicle occupants looked nervous, the officer smelled the overwhelming scent of air freshener (often used to mask drugs), and their story didn't make much sense.

The dissents are a really good read: I'm against the drug war full stop but had to admit that within our current legal framework, this decision doesn't make much sense.

I agree that currently it is fair game for an unsuspected crime to be prosecutable in the course of a legitimate search for another (and gave an example of why that could be a good thing), but I still think the original case represents a glaring failure of law. The defendant in this case allowed the officer to enter in good faith, so that the officer could reassure himself that no crime of violence had taken place and that the defendant's explanation of loud sexual activity was indeed truthful. Notwithstanding the contraband nature of marijuana, this good faith invitation should IMHO have been a massive mitigatory factor. The qualitative difference between the suspected and the actual crime are so great as to shock my conscience - not only are murder or rape considered more severe as evidenced by the heavier sentences they would attract, but they're also crimes of violence, and crimes involving a victim, whereas the harm that results from marijuana cultivation is proximate (at best) and to the extent that it even exists, is diffuse because the impact is societal. The fact that McGacken was sent to prison for 10 years Makes me want to throw up every time I think about it, especially because he was so cooperative with the investigation.

(http://www.leagle.com/decision/in%20njco%2020100315165 for people who would like to read the details; I should have linked this in the message above).

I'm speaking here of moral rather than legal principle, ie I'm making a purely normative argument. On a technical level I agree with you completely, and I have yet to bridge the gap between moral and legal principle to my own satisfaction.

What if the officer doesn't feel safe until everyone is handcuffed in a corner and all the dogs are dead? (I'm exaggerating about the people, but sadly, not about the dogs).

weighting between some people not being arrested for drugs vs. police routinely violating Constitution?

It would be easier to arrest for possession if searches, seizures, and arrests didn't require probable cause, and police could just arrest anyone, anywhere for any reason or none at all -- and search anything anywhere without consent for any reason or none at all, and use any evidence so obtained in prosecution.

Much of the Bill of Rights -- and much of the concept of individual rights against government underlying and preceding it -- is based on the belief that making it easier for the government to arrest and prosecute people even for things that everyone agrees are bad is often less of a benefit than the powers granted to government in order to achieve that are a harm.

So that's at least one school of thought on how this could be good even though it makes it harder to arrest for possession, even if one things that arrests for possession (where actual possession occurs) are a good thing.

http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/welcome/features/2010-2011/02/2...

If police departments could afford to make every existing single-officer patrol unit a two-officer K-9 unit, they'd already do that.