U.S. Supreme Court to Decide on Legality of Drug Dog Searches

The U.S. Supreme Court will determine whether the use of a drug-detection dog on a routine traffic offense is legal or if police need a specific justification.

Click to expand...

The United States Supreme Court will determine whether the use of drug-detection dogs at traffic stops is an invasion of privacy, the Washington Post reported Nov. 11, 2004.

Roy Caballes who was pulled over six years ago by Illinois state trooper Daniel Gillette for driving six miles per hour over the posted speed limit of 65.
Gillette was planning to let Caballes go with a warning until a second trooper arrived with a drug-detection dog.
The dog began to walk around Caballes' car and reacted to a scent in the trunk that turned out to be a shipment of marijuana.

Caballes was convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced to 12 years in prison. However, the Illinois Supreme Court threw out Caballes' conviction last year, ruling that Gillette had extended the traffic stop based on "nothing more than a vague hunch" that Caballes' profile fit that of a drug dealer.

The state of Illinois appealed the case to the high court.
The U.S. Supreme Court will determine whether the use of a drug-detection dog on a routine traffic offense is legal or if police need a specific justification.

In previous cases, the justices had ruled that dog sniffs were not searches and therefore required no special justification.

"Dog sniffs are very unique," said Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan in opening arguments in the case.
"They are only going to reveal the presence or absence of contraband, and this court has held that there is no privacy interest in contraband."

With Dog Detectives, Mistakes Can Happen

With Dog Detectives, Mistakes Can Happen

NYTimes (23 DEC 2002) -

When bomb-sniffing dogs indicated the presence of explosives last summer in the cars of three medical students bound for Miami, the authorities detained the men and closed a major thoroughfare across South Florida. No trace of explosives was found in their cars.

Now, a number of scientists and trainers are expressing concern that such
mistakes could become more common as thousands of new canine detectives are deployed across the country.

Experts on explosives detection say that when dogs' handlers are excited and
stressed, the dogs may overreact and falsely suggest that explosives are
present when they are not. False alerts are better than missing a live bomb,
they say, but it is better for the dogs to be accurate.

More rigorous training and certification standards and more research into
the way dogs detect scents and the relationship between them and their
handlers are needed to avoid these problems, said Dr. Lawrence J. Myers, an
expert on dog olfaction at the Auburn University College of Veterinary
Medicine.

Dogs are far better at sniffing out the source of a particular odor than any
machine yet developed, experts say. They are also more manageable and
culturally acceptable than rats and other animals adept at detecting scents.

Scientists have estimated that a dog's nose has about 220 million
mucus-coated olfactory receptors, roughly 40 times as many as humans.

When a dog sniffs, chemical vapors - and, perhaps, tiny particles - lodge in
the mucus and dissolve, sending electrical signals along the olfactory nerve
and ultimately to nearly all parts of the brain.
In dogs, the vomeronasal organ in the roof of the mouth and two branches of the trigeminal nerve in the nasal cavity also play roles in scent detection.

Skilled trainers have taught dogs to detect just about anything that emits
even the faintest odor, including explosives, underground oil and water
leaks, contraband food, termites, guns, drugs and cash.
But in most cases, scientists have not measured the lowest levels of odor that dogs can detect.

Training and handling dogs is an art at which some people excel, and
together top dogs and top handlers can perform extraordinary feats.
But there are limits on dogs' performance that are frequently overlooked.
Poor
handlers alone, Dr. Myers said, can cause dogs' vaunted accuracy rate of 85
percent to 95 percent to plummet to 60 percent, Dr. Myers said.

"Dogs want rewards," he added, "and so they will give false alerts to get them.
Dogs lie.
We know they do."

Determining how accurately dogs in general detect particular odors is
difficult, experts say, because procedures vary from place to place, and few
have been subjected to rigorous scientific testing.
Though some dogs and
handlers are consistently good, all may vary in their daily performance.

When dogs are asked to identify people, the situation is even more complex.
This use of dogs is based on assumptions that every person has a unique
scent, that odor is stable over time and that dogs can tell one person from
another. But the first two assumptions have not been fully verified and the
last is not always true, said Dr. Adee Schoon, scientific adviser to the
Netherlands National Police Agency Canine Department.

"You need special handlers and special dogs for identifying suspects," said
Dr. Schoon, who recently visited Florida International University in Miami
to present a seminar on scent identification at its International Forensic
Research Institute and to discuss collaborative research.

In the 1990's, Dr. Schoon documented that the Dutch procedure for
identifying suspects with dogs was prone to substantial errors. Then, she
redesigned it.

Her biggest achievement, she said, has been discrediting people who say, `My dog never errs.' "

Scent identification in Holland is now conducted under controlled
circumstances to minimize human and dog errors. Investigators ask the
suspect and six "foils," who have had no involvement in the crime, to hold
small steel tubes briefly.

The tubes are then lined up on a platform in parallel rows of seven each in
a pattern unknown to the handler. The dog's task is then to match a scent
from the crime scene to tubes in two rows.

The dog performs two tests, the first to prove that its nose is on target
and that it has no interest in the scent of the suspect, by tracking down
the tubes touched by a foil.

In the second, it identifies the suspect, if that person's scent is present,
from scents taken at a crime scene. The dog works off its leash to minimize
the handler's influence. "All kinds of problems" arise when a dog is asked
to match scent to an actual person, Dr. Schoon said. For one thing, she
said, the handler may unconsciously direct the dog toward a particular
suspect.

Dogs are also known to become fixated on people for no apparent reason and
to return to them again and again, Dr. Schoon said. Without the first test
run in which the dog is asked to find another "suspect" in the same group,
it is very difficult to tell when a dog is becoming fixated for no apparent
reason, she added.

Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, a bioweapons expert, was identified by federal law
enforcement authorities this summer as "a person of interest" in the anthrax
inquiry based in part on scent-matching by three bloodhounds.

Pat Clawson, a spokesman for Dr. Hatfill, questioned the circumstances
surrounding the use of bloodhounds and said the dogs' responses were
inadequate to link Dr. Hatfill to the anthrax letters. No charges have been
brought in the case.

Experts say other problems can emerge when the dog is faced with only one
person. Because dogs are regularly rewarded for choosing suspects in
training, they are predisposed to say yes when asked to match scents in
situations involving only one potential suspect, experts say. It takes time
to train an animal to say no in such cases.

Edward Hamm, a member of the Southern California Bloodhound Handlers
Coalition and one of the bloodhound handlers involved in the Federal Bureau
of Investigation's anthrax work, said that all three dogs in the Hatfill
case were specifically trained to say no, but he would not discuss any
details of the case. Paul Bresson, an F.B.I spokesman, also declined to
comment.

Determining the accuracy of detection and scent identification dogs is often
difficult. Certification standards for dogs and handlers vary markedly from
state to state and agency to agency.

Written training logs, which are used to establish a dog's reliability in
court, are themselves often unreliable.

"There is a saying in Holland that the training log is a lie," Dr. Schoon
said, if only because handlers want their dogs to look good. It is not known
how often this problem crops up in the United States.

Dr. Myers said: "The standard measure of a dog's accuracy is what it finds.
The best programs subtract from that score the number of false alerts, but
most do not and so they have no accurate measure of their dogs'
reliability." He is helping to create software to assist handlers and
trainers in selecting, training and maintaining their dogs at optimal
levels.

Maine Specialty Dogs in Alfred trains dogs for fire departments around the
country to search burned out buildings, often for minute traces of flammable
compounds that may have been used in arson, said the head trainer there,
Paul Gallagher. Sponsored by State Farm Insurance, the school selects,
trains, certifies and recertifies about 100 "arson dogs" a year. No dog that
has even one false alert in its final proficiency test receives
certification, he added.

Around the country, a few other programs are equally demanding. Secret
Service bomb dogs, considered among the best in the world, are retested
weekly and must have an accuracy percentage in the upper 90's, said a
spokesman, Brian Marr.

While concerned about missed targets, many trainers and handlers deny that
their dogs sound false alarms, and so they do not record them, especially if
they occur in the field. They argue instead that the dog is picking up a
faint trace of a substance that was once present, or that a handler caused
the dog to err.

Handlers can create errors by pulling their dogs away from things they are
investigating, by letting them search too long in a single place or by
inciting the dog through some gesture, glance or emotion, even unconscious.
Trainers say the message "travels right down the leash."

Mainly for that reason, the few studies of dog performance that have been
done suggest that dogs perform best off their leashes.

Off-leash work is common in Europe, but for a variety of social and legal
reasons, dogs are worked almost exclusively on-leash in the United States,
said Dr. Paul Waggoner, interim director of the Canine and Detection
Research Institute at Auburn.

Drug Sniffing Dogs (Continued)

Drug Sniffing Dogs (Continued)

Other factors can also hurt a dog's performance, Dr. Myers said. He
estimates that in any year, 35 percent of detection dogs temporarily lose
their sense of smell because of illness, tooth decay or other physical
problems.

Weather also affects performance. Dry, hot weather can cause the mucus in
the dog's nose to dry out. Hot, humid weather brings early fatigue. Extreme
cold kills scents, and the wind scatters them.

Creatures of habit, dogs also can become stuck in their ways. For example, a
dog might become fixated on a particular object or smell, Dr. Myers said,
citing a police dog in Alabama that began alerting its handlers to Ziploc
bags because the police stored drug training samples in them.

In the 1990's, researchers at Tel Aviv University showed that dogs would
begin to slack off if they were given fewer samples to sniff for than they
had been trained to find.

The researchers also found that after several days of patrolling an area,
like a stretch of road, the dogs would give up if they discovered no
explosives.

As a result, bomb-sniffing dogs in Israel are continually rotated to new
areas on patrol, said Dr. Joseph Terkel, the professor of zoology at Tel
Aviv University who directed the research, conducted by a doctoral student,
Irit Gazit. Trainers also vary the number, size and concentration of
targets, down to zero, in practice and include "blanks" with different
scents, which the dog should ignore.

Because Israeli bomb dogs work off-leash, 50 to 100 yards ahead of their
handlers and often out of sight, the Tel Aviv researchers several years ago
developed a miniature microphone that fits on the dog's nose and allows the
handler to hear whether the dog is panting or sniffing.

A panting dog cannot sniff. A radio receiver allows the handler to recall
the dog and send it out to search a specific site again if necessary.

The practice of training dogs on substances concocted to replicate the
primary odors found in drugs or explosives can also lead to error, said Dr.
Kenneth G. Furton, director of the forensic science program at Florida
International University.

Studies have shown that different dogs respond to different components of an
odor and that those components change over time. So dogs accustomed to a
concoction used in training may have a hard time recognizing the more
complex bouquet of the actual substance.

Experts say more research may resolve uncertainties and maximize dogs'
performance. Meanwhile, they say, training and certification standards
should be tightened to ensure that dogs and handlers are as reliable as
possible.

[I have heard of smugglers along the Canadian border making up some Cannabis tea and spraying it on tourists cars at places like burger joints such as mcdonalds located along the border. One can probably imagine the ensuing chaos with all the false hits as the tourist's vehicles cross back over into the states. This may be an urban legend, but sounds quite probable. IMB ]

No, no myth, that hapens all the time. A friend who was about to have his apartment complex hallways runthrough by drug dogs took some of his pot and, at 3AM one night, went and pressed the bud against all the doors in the complex. No busts went down in that complex

Someone sprayed bubble water all over a US/Canadian Ferry to confuse the dope sniffers. When I read that I kept thinking about the Sniffer in "Up In Smoke". That's sensory overload with a vengeance. Poor pooch.

I just have to make this point

I just have to make this point

The U.S. supreme court recently(I.M. Boggled, help me out here) ruled that infrared was illegal to use for growroom detection without a warrant. This ruling was handed down because infrared allows an officer to reach far beyond the range of human senses, and literally search the inside of a building without ever informing the occupant that they are being searched, and do it all from outside. IMO drug dogs are the exact same issue. no one will argue the fact that a dogs nose and range of smell extend far beyond a humans. This seems like it would be enough of an argument. if LEO wants to use a dog to search make em get a warrant first! And, for all the LEO that honestly think that a dog is cop, i beg to differ. I would be willing to meet any canine "officer" and prove that he is nothing more or less than any other dog(not at my house of course) by pulling a wet cat out of a bag and throwing it at the "canine officer" or by bringing a female dog in heat with me. any other "officer" would obey his commands at a time like that, i have worked with many dogs over the years, and i haven't met one that could resist a wet cat. the whole idea of baiting the dogs is cool too, i have been grinding my fan leaves down to a fine powder, and sprinkling that all over my neighborhood, everywhere but my lawn of course!
peAce y'all pacT

Hopefully they see it as an unreasonable search as they do with infrared...

Hopefully they see it as an unreasonable search as they do with infrared...

Police violate the U.S. Constitution if they use a heat-sensing device to peer inside a home without a search warrant, the Supreme Court ruled June 11, 2001.

An unusual lineup of five justices voted to bolster the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches and threw out an Oregon man's conviction for growing marijuana.

http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=4574&highlight=supreme+court

Supreme Court Allows Drug Dog Vehicle Searches Without Cause

Supreme Court Allows Drug Dog Vehicle Searches Without Cause

originally published 1/28/05

While Monday's ruling allows police to use the occasion of a traffic stop to let drug-sniffing dogs check out a vehicle, it does not allow for the indefinite detention of drivers to give the dogs time to arrive to do the non-search search. Lower federal courts have varied in determining what period of time constitutes a constitutionally permissible detention, with some allowing waits of up to 90 minutes.

Click to expand...

The Supreme Court has once again expanded the ability of police to conduct warrantless searches, this time okaying the use of drug-sniffing dogs to check motorists detained for traffic violations even when police have no reason to suspect they have committed a crime. The decision provides constitutional protection for what has become an increasingly common practice on the nation's highways in the war on drugs. It also, according to an impassioned dissenting opinion, could lead to widespread drug dog sweeps of sidewalks and parking lots.

The Monday ruling came in the case of Roy Caballes, who was stopped by Illinois police for speeding on Interstate 80 in 1998. While Caballes complied with the request to produce his driver's license, registration, and proof of insurance, troopers brought a drug dog to sniff his car because he "seemed nervous." The dog alerted, providing police with probable cause to search Caballes' vehicle, where they found pounds of marijuana. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison, but his conviction was overturned by the Illinois Supreme Court, which held that police "impermissibly broadened the scope of the traffic stop" by using the drug-sniffing dog without suspicion that Caballes possessed drugs.

At the Supreme Court Cabelles' attorney argued that the Fourth Amendment protects motorists from searches such as dog sniffs, which he said could be humiliating and intimidating and should not be allowed without particularized suspicion. But the state of Illinois, backed by the Bush administration Department of Justice -- and precedent in the federal courts -- argued that walking a drug-sniffing dog around a vehicle to see if it could detect illicit drugs was not a "search."

In a 6-2 decision, the Supreme Court found for the state. "The dog sniff was performed on the exterior of respondent's car while he was lawfully seized for a traffic violation," wrote Justice John Paul Stevens for the majority. "Any intrusion on respondent's privacy expectations does not rise to the level of a constitutionally cognizable infringement." But Stevens wasn't done yet. "A dog sniff conducted during a concededly lawful traffic stop that reveals no information other than the location of a substance that no individual has any right to possess does not violate the Fourth Amendment," he added.

Still, at least for two justices, providing a constitutional imprimatur for suspicionless drug dog sniffing of vehicles was too much. In a dissent joined in part by Justice David Souter, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg warned that the majority opinion could make traffic stops more "adversarial" and lead to widespread drug dog searches. "Injecting such animals into a routine traffic stop changes the character of the encounter between the police and the motorist. The stop becomes broader, more adversarial and (in at least some cases) longer," she wrote. "Under today's decision, every traffic stop could become an occasion to call in the dogs, to the distress and embarrassment of the law-abiding population," she wrote. The decision "clears the way for suspicionless, dog-accompanied drug sweeps of parked cars along sidewalks and in parking lots."

While Monday's ruling allows police to use the occasion of a traffic stop to let drug-sniffing dogs check out a vehicle, it does not allow for the indefinite detention of drivers to give the dogs time to arrive to do the non-search search. Lower federal courts have varied in determining what period of time constitutes a constitutionally permissible detention, with some allowing waits of up to 90 minutes.

Steven Silverman, executive director of the Flex Your Rights Foundation, counsels drivers confronted with threats of calling in the drug dogs to exercise their rights and simply ask to be on their way. "Basically, if police can't bring a dog to the scene in the time it takes to run your tags and write a ticket, the use of the dog becomes constitutionally suspect," said Silverman. "In our video, 'BUSTED: The Citizen's Guide to Surviving Police Encounters,' we warn viewers that police will often threaten to bring dogs to the scene. Since police cannot detain you for the purpose of investigating an additional crime -- unless they have evidence you've committed one -- our advice is still to ask if you are free to go.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/372/dogsearches.shtml

I.M.Boggled it's good to see ya posting again. You always have some good info. Hope everything is going well for ya. peace and *bong* :friends:

I to am glad to see you here again I.M. Boggled.

a substance that no individual has any right to possess

Click to expand...

...



fun with smilies... keep it safe everyone

Thanks for the welcome back guys

Thanks for the welcome back guys

I appreciate it, It's feels good to be back online. I've been living in the sticks without internet.
Got a 24 k dialup these days thats got those blazin' fast downloads of about < 2 kb...Lets just say a short nap while a page loads is quite possible sometimes.
"Dialup sucks but it's better than nothing",
that apparently is my providers sales pitch.

As the music que's:

Green Acres is the place for me.
Farm livin' is the life for me.
Land spreadin' out so far and wide.
Keep Manhattan, just give me that countryside.


New York is where I'd rather stay.
I get allergic smelling hay.
I just adore a penthouse view.
Dah-ling I love you but give me Park Avenue.


...The chores.
...The stores.
...Fresh air.
...Times Square


You are my wife.
Good bye, city life.
Green Acres we are here

^^^
Boggled! Its great to have our friendly encyclopedia back! man i was starting to worry about you. nice to see your alive and well. take care man

I would just like to express what I find to be bullshit about police dogs.

Well of course using a dog without cause is the same thing as running an infrared detector through the suburbs looking for HID's,
But what I really think is bullshit is if you kill one of those damn dogs you go down for murder of a cop... Yet one of these 120 pound beast german shepherd's are free to chase you down tackle you and maul you until the real cops arrive... if your gonna consider the damn dog an officer well im gonna sue you for police brutality! Shit I got a german shepherd. She could do some serious damage if I trained her to... But shes a sweetheart.

Sorry this might be -- but welcome back I.M. Boggled, long time no see.

dogs

dogs

Spraying pot tea on cars on the border and rubbing buds on every door - how ingenious! I would also suggest when transporting weed - ALWAYS HAVE A CAT IN THE CAR! That kitty might save your ass. Read a story in high times bout a guy who was pulled over, a K9 unit appeared, dog starts barking like crazy and his kitty freaks out - the cops didn't search him and let him go.

A project - mix some buds, kitty hair and gunpowder and go to a major airport. Spray all over!
Ahahahahaahaha! That would be soooo much fun!

When will the case be heard?

Thanks for letting us know also

-V.B

Great to have you back IMB!! Lets rock out the Cannabis news and articles for the peeps!

Aren't dogs just like big slobbering infared-heat detectors? Do we really want a police state nation where every Police Officer has a German Shepherd? Just a bit too reminiscent of the Nazis for my taste.....why can't they train poodles? -gp

Hey I.M. Boggled,

you always are always posting up to date information regarding legal issues and things.

If you dont mind my asking, what is your source for information??

I would love to be able to stay up to date on things like that

The part that strikes me is they said the guy "appeared nervous". What if he was a non-drug possesing citizen that had simply never been pulled over before and was nervous? I know when I get pulled over (with or without anything illegal in my car), that I'm at least somewhat nervous.

Reading that article actaully almost made me angry because dogs seem like such an unfair advantage to LEO...like they need anymore unfair advantages.

And OXOSSI, thats a good idea to have to have a cat in the car. I'd imagine a dog my work as well? Dogs are always barking at other dogs.

Good read for sure.