This is not a post about arguments heard this week by the Supreme Court on matters related to same-sex marriage. It’s about two cases recently decided on the use of dogs to sniff out contraband or illegal products (H/T The Atlantic).
On Tuesday the Court ruled on Florida v. Jardines (H/T SCOTUSBlog) The case concerned the use of a dog in obtaining a search warrant for a residence. The residence was staked out based on an anonymous tip. A drug-sniffing dog and his handler walked onto the porch. The dog went into alert at the base of the door. That sniff was used to obtain a search warrant. But in the majority opinion (and the concurring opinion), the dog was not the critical element. The porch is considered part of the house based on prior cases, so the act of walking on the porch without a warrant invalidated anything that would have resulted from information gathered there. The dissenting opinion disagreed on both the notion of the porch being part of the house and on whether odors from within the house that drift out retain Fourth Amendment protection.
The other dog matter, Florida v. Harris, concerned a sniffer dog outside of a truck, rather than a house. Since the truck was in public, the question of whether the dog sniffing the outside of the truck constituted a search requiring a warrant doesn’t apply. At issue was the dog’s expertise, for lack of a better word. Because the dog sniffed the truck on two separate occasions. Complicating matters, the second time the dog sniffed, he signaled that there was something, but there wasn’t. And even with the first incident, none of the drugs the dog was trained to sniff were found. An arrest was made based on the large amount of materials present that could be used to make crystal meth. The dog was trained to sniff out methamphetamine, but none was found in the truck in either stop.
Pasco Phronesis 