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Supreme Court Rules Extending Traffic Stop For Dog Sniff Unconstitutional
bmxeroh writes: The Supreme Court ruled today (PDF) that a police officer may not extend a traffic stop beyond the time needed to complete the tasks related to that stop for the purposes of allowing a trained dog to sniff for drugs. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the majority (6-3) that police authority "ends when tasks tied to the traffic infraction are — or reasonably should have been — completed." The case, Rodriguez v. United States, 13-9972, all started with Rodriguez was stopped in Nebraska for driving out of his lane. After he was given the ticket for that infraction, he was made to wait an additional seven to eight minutes for a drug dog to arrive which promptly alerted to the presence of drugs in the car. Upon search, the officers found a small bag of methamphetamine in his possession.
The dissenters' statements agree in principle with the majority but cite reasons that the majority's opinion is in error in this case, i.e. that there was reasonable cause to call in the dog and that the delay was not excessive.
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You're a fucking idiot. Did you know that these dogs can be trained to alert on cash? You know, the cash you might have in the car because you just sold your motorcycle like I did last October. Do you know what happens when the cops find cash? They steal it from you under the pretense that you MIGHT have been involved in a drug transaction or some other nefarious crime. Civil Forfeiture Laws are a thing and this ruling will help protect the innocent from those who would police for profit. Sit. Stay. Moron. P.
To be honest, I figured that it /had/ to be a bad ruling and ...
No, it's all due to the stupid vague line between a "temporary stop", a "detention", and an "arrest". Our various branches of government have struggled with it for two centuries now.
Police need people to interact with them so the officers can do the job of investigating crimes. But legally in order to do that they must seize the thing, seize the person, seize the property, whatever. The requirements about due process, seizure of people and property, the law needed to allow for certain types of temporary seizures of people, and the balance is a hard one.
The traffic stop is just that, a stop. A temporary detention that can only last as long as necessary for the administrative task.
In the ruling (and according to most judges already), the officer stopped the individual and performed the task of writing a citation. Anything more than that is no longer a stop, it becomes either a detention or an arrest.
The ruling is clear on what the problem was here. The officer testified that they "had all their documents back and a copy of the written warning. I got all the reasons for the stop out of the way." Then after the stop was complete he did not allow the man to leave, even after the man asked to go, so the officer could call in a drug-sniffing dog. That was a second detention, done without probable cause (since he had already dealt with the reason for the stop), and was therefore unlawful.
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No, the point is that in order to use the dog, they need to have probable cause of another crime having been committed. There wasn't any probable cause here, so they couldn't use the dog (whether it took longer or not).
In the UK at least (not sure about the US on this part), at a traffic stop, the police absolutely are not allowed to search your car in any way, unless you give them permission, or they have reasonable suspicion of another crime having been committed.
The handler doesn't even need to signal the dog. The handler might just want to search the car, and the dog picks up on unconscious cues, and alerts.
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Just because the supreme court says you cant, doesnt mean departments wont push the envelope to see if they can challenge it, and for how long. Most minorities arrested for example never see a courtroom, but instead are strong-armed. Typically a prosecutor meets with the accused, threatens them with a dozen or so charges from failure to yield to a stop sign to improper socks after labour day and throws a random double digit integer of years in a prison described like Auschwitz. Once the accused is terrified into pleading guilty for a "reduced sentence" the prosecutor packs up their briefcase and bellies up to the local pub assured he will get to keep his job. Prosecutors that are fair and pursue lenient charges tend to prevent the DA and Judges from getting re-elected, and will eventually get shown the door.
Good people go to bed earlier.
>> In the UK at least (not sure about the US on this part), at a traffic stop, the police absolutely are not allowed to search your car in any way, unless you give them permission, or they have reasonable suspicion of another crime having been committed.
It's the same here in the USA. "Reasonable Suspicion" is a pretty low bar, however. There was a line of cases (from the 70s/80s I believe) that outlined what constituted reasonable suspicion, and it included things such as "actively not looking at a cop car when it drove past," "looking at a cop car the entire time it was driving past," "waving to the police car," "not waving back to the officer," etc. In other words, if the officer can argue "something seemed fishy" to him given basically any set of circumstances, then it is reasonable suspicion.
You need probable cause to do an actual search, however, and a warrant. The exception is for when things are in plain sight: if you can see/hear/smell something illegal from outside. E.g., there is a crack pipe sitting on the seat next to you, then they can seize it and arrest you. Where it becomes controversial is when the senses are augmented: night vision, heat vision, bionic ears, a dog's sensitive nose. Those photons, sound waves, odor molecules obviously aren't contained within your private space (which requires a warrant to search) or they wouldn't have been detected. These cases are about defining those lines.
In the US it's been a long standing principle upheld by the courts that "fishing expeditions" are not allowed. That is, a traffic stop is for a traffic stop only, unless there is clear evidence of other illegal activity (the driver appears intoxicated, a dead body is in the back seat, etc). Warrants explicitly list what can and can not be searched.
So there's nothing really new here except the old story of law enforcement attempting to expand their powers and the courts pushing back again.
The dogs are demonstrably a placebo that "triggers" when the handling cop signals the dog to do so.
Have you actually worked with drug sniffing dogs? I have. They're actually the real deal in almost all cases. In fact one of my immediate family members owned a retired one. I also do work with tracking dogs as a hobby. While I don't doubt for a moment that there are some crooked cops using drug dogs inappropriately, this does not accurately or fairly describe most of them. Simple fact is that they are commonly used to find contraband and are successful in doing so regularly. They are successful in finding drugs WAY too often for it to be merely false positives to allow illegal searches.
http://nevergetbusted.com/nevergetbusted-tips/university-study-tricked-certified-police-dogs-to-false-alert-200-times/
http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=40028
http://www.wayne-county-forfeiture.com/content/drug-dogs-and-false-alerts-police-lie-and-dogs-wont-sniff-out-perjury
I've known people who have had their car searched because a dog allegedly signaled that there were drugs in the car when there were not. They looked like stoners (long hair and tie-dyed shirts) so the cops probably thought the odds were good they would find something. When they didn't they just blamed the dog and said something along the lines of, "well, you were probably smoking pot in this vehicle at some point, and that's probably what the dog smelled."
The dog is just an excuse to violate your rights.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
Reaching back to law school memories here, but I recall a case (decided in the 80s or 90s?) where the Court ruled that drug-sniffing dogs do not require any suspicion, because you have no reasonable expectation of privacy in the scent of drugs coming from your stuff. So this ruling just addresses a follow-on question: If the police are permitted to use drug-sniffing dogs at will, can they also detain you without reasonable suspicion and make you wait around for the dog to show up. The answer was a very reasonable "no." If they don't have evidence that you've done something wrong, they can't detain you.
I think this rule is reasonable on both counts. The Fourth Amendment doesn't give you a substantive right to commit crimes and not be found out. It only protects you from unreasonable police procedures. If you are carrying an illegal substance that a dog can detect without invading your privacy, that's your problem. But the police should never be able to detain a citizen for any reason, for any amount of time, without probable cause that the person has committed or is committing a crime. To rule otherwise is to place us in a police state.
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IMO, never read an article about a SCOTUS opinion. Always read the opinion itself. They are not difficult to find and not difficult to read.
No, it really doesn't.
Maybe the driver was futzing with their cell phone. Maybe their eyesight has degraded but they still have a license. Maybe there was something in the road that the officer didn't see. Maybe there was a bee in the car. Maybe the passenger grabbed the wheel. Maybe the vehicle is malfunctioning (say, headlights are out). Maybe the driver hit a pothole. Maybe the lines were unclear, having been repainted. Maybe the driver was falling asleep.
The core issue here was that the police officer was finished with the traffic stop. Then he asked to do a search, and the driver refused, and then he detained the driver.
You can't detain someone longer than is reasonable (4th Amendment), and the decision says it's only reasonable to detain someone as long as it takes to complete the traffic stop (a definition established in Illinois v. Caballes in 2005). So case law says that the 4th Amendment's "reasonable" means "as long as it takes to finish the traffic stop." By the officer's own admission, the traffic stop was complete. Since nothing incriminating had been discovered by that point, that makes further detention or search unreasonable, and that makes the it all unconstitutional.
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
You see, it is often the case here that roads are built for speeds much higher than the actual posted limit. Parameters like lane width, grade, shoulder presence & width, presence/absence of median, etc. all contribute to an intuitive psychological understanding of what an appropriate (and safe) speed is. By posting a lower limit, the cops and the cities they work for have a nice juicy revenue stream whenever they please to use it. Moreover, they have a 'legitimate' reason to stop and harass whomever they don't like, e.g., brown people. Or maybe they do it to keep people safe .
which is funny because it seems they clearly have not actually reviewed the use of the dogs themselves because, in this instance, they are less scientifically sound than a polygraph.
Dogs have a great sense of smell but even better sense of what their pack leader wants from them. They play clever hans even better than they smell and its been shown over and over that dogs are useless in the case that there is..... ANY SUSPICION AT ALL.
Quite simply, the moment an officer decided he should use the dog, the dog "smelling something" is almost a foregone conclusion, even in the absence of any actual substance to smell. This has been shown quite readily by simply putting dogs and their handlers through courses with no smell, but several visual indicators for handlers, they found that the vast majority of the time dogs had a "hit" even when the rate should have been a flat 0. When there was an indication to the trainer....they hit WAY more often.
Dogs are only useful in manhunts and at checkpoints where searches are ubiquitous and there is no reason to suspect any individual.
Whenever there is ANY suspiscion, the dog is JUST A PROP.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
No, the point is that in order to use the dog, they need to have probable cause of another crime having been committed. There wasn't any probable cause here, so they couldn't use the dog (whether it took longer or not).
That is simply not true. Read the opinion linked to the in summary. The finding is solely based on the fact that the duration of the traffic stop was increased while the officer waited for backup to arrive before conducting the dog sniff. The question of whether or not dog sniffs require reasonable suspicion or probable cause during a traffic stop was already decided in Illinois v. Caballes, 543 U. S. 405, 407, a case cited in the present opinion, and it was found that no reasonable suspicion or probable cause was required unless, according to Caballes: the stop “become[s] unlawful if it is prolonged beyond the time reasonably required to complete th[e] mission.” (That mission being to deal with the traffic violation.)
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
"they clearly have not actually reviewed the use of the dogs themselves..."
False; this was ruled on by SCOTUS in a 2013 case. They unanimously voted that drug-sniffing dog alerts are inherently trustworthy. A terrible decision, IMO.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/supreme-court-sides-with-drug-sniffing-dog/2013/02/19/1d9f7414-7aac-11e2-82e8-61a46c2cde3d_story.html
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Scientific testing says otherwise.
http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/welcome/features/2010-2011/02/20110223_drug_dogs.html
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
You have no idea what "Reasonable, Articulable Suspicion"(RAS from this point forward) is, and how it came about. Terry v. Ohio(1968) is the case you would want to research, and how "Terry Frisks" came to be an exception(to which I don't completely agree with, based on court reasoning, and the rather plain language within the US Constitution(not so much for US or state law). No matter, probable cause is still absolutely required to initiate a "stop" or "temporary detention"(i.e. traffic stops, "Tier 2" encounters). A situation being "fishy" doesn't provide "RAS".
You are also wrong on searches. Absent "exigent circumstances"(say, gunshots and someone screaming "don't kill me" from within a structure), a search requires a warrant, based on probable cause, which specifies the items, or items, and specific places to be searched. The "Terry Frisk" is an exception, which requires RAS that one, or multiple potential suspects have just committed, are currently committing, or will soon be committing a criminal act, based on training and/or experience, and such a "search" is limited to "patting down" the outer clothing of any subject that qualifies.
I should also add that a traffic stop requires probable cause to effect. In other words, I can't initiate a traffic stop because some "asshole" didn't present or return a friendly gesture(wave at me, or wave back at me), or because I see an attractive female in a "rough neighborhood". Traffic stops are initiated because I, as a law enforcement officer, or another certified and sworn law enforcement officer personally witnessed the target of said traffic stop violate the portion of state law that applied to violations of traffic law(in the State of Georgia, that would be Title 40 of the O.C.G.A., or "Official Code of Georgia Annotated"). I can't intelligently comment on states outside of the Southeastern United States, but in Georgia, specifically, a citizen cannot legally witness an alleged traffic law violation, report said violation, and have that report be sufficient to provide probable cause to initiate a stop, or effect an arrest(outside of an extreme few violations, which cover the intentional loss of life, loss of life during the commission on another offense, etc). A law enforcement officer must personally witness, or have a verified third-party certified and sworn law enforcement officer(Georgia law enforcement-only, and said law enforcement must have a certification in good standing with the Georgia POST Council, which oversees all law enforcement certification on both the State(Georgia) and local level).
This isn't a completely comprehensive commentary on the subject. I hold a certification from the State of Georgia's POST Council(Peace Officer's Standards and Training Council), among numerous other certifications and recorded training. I am an ex-law enforcement officer, and I keep myself up-to-date on current training, case law, and other important information, as it pertains to law enforcement.
I am also happy to see this ruling, as it was long overdue. I am grown tired of this, among other problems, within the law enforcement field.