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Supreme Court to Rule on Drug Dogs in Traffic Stops
(David Stout, New York Times, April 5, 2004)
So now the case of Illinois v. Caballes, 03-923, will go before the United States Supreme Court. It is yet another in a series of cases weighing police officers' power to look for wrongdoing against the Constitution's Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. . . . In a Michigan case from more than a decade ago, the justices upheld sobriety checkpoints as a means of protecting public safety by getting drunken drivers off the road. The Supreme Court has also ruled that a sniff by a drug-detecting dog, which is commonly used at airports, is so minimally intrusive as not to constitute a search. . . . But in a 2000 case from Indianapolis, the justices ruled that roadblocks aimed at discovering drugs violate the Fourth Amendment. The majority held that "the generalized and ever-present possibility that interrogation and inspection may reveal that any given motorist has committed some crime" was insufficient justification for wholesale stops. . . . An Illinois appeals court rejected Mr. Caballes's argument, finding that the sniff by the dog was justified. But the Illinois Supreme Court sided with the defendant, ruling 4 to 3 that the sniff was conducted without "specific and articulable facts" and throwing out the conviction. . . . The Illinois justices said the fact that the aroma of air-freshener was obvious in the defendant's car and his apparent nervousness even after being told he was being given only a warning for speeding could account for "nothing more than a vague hunch" on the part of the troopers, not a sufficient basis to let the dog sniff. . . . In any event, the Illinois attorney general, Lisa Madigan, has appealed the Illinois Supreme Court ruling. So within the next several months, the United States Supreme Court will rule on Mr. Caballes's fate, and perhaps clarify when a sniff is a search, and when it is just a sniff.

posted by LoZo 12:19 PM