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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.
again
To be honest, I figured that it /had/ to be a bad ruling and spent a while trying to understand why it was wrong, just because of how they've been lately. Perhaps I'm just paranoid.
Why did this get to be a post on slashdot?
Joy, the ACLU strikes a blow for degenerates everywhere!
The obvious problem is that we pay them so much more for drug busts than for traffic citations.
Because, know your rights.
If there are any Grammar 'experts' out there, could someone tell me if the following sentence is incorrect or correct?
The case, Rodriguez v. United States, 13-9972, all started with Rodriguez was stopped in Nebraska for driving out of his lane.
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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We do follow a lot of SCOTUS on Slashdot, so I guess the post matches. I'm kind of with the dissent on this if just because the ambiguity of authority this creates. It doesn't look like he was under the influence at the time, but the term "driving out of his lane" does kind of give reasonable cause for drug use, but maybe thats profiling. The article points out that dog searches are legal and its ok to arrest people traffic violations where the search could of been carried out.
I mean think about it, apparently the problem is the officer finished his job then asked the defendant to wait for a second search. If the officer had started a 15 minute search after placing the defendant in his car to ensure he was safe would that have made this incident ok? Searches are legal, but waiting for backup to conduct a search isn't?
Momento Mori
In other news all police cars will now contain drug sniffing dogs.
the facts and very own shitter, And s7ing or table
...in a pretty blatant violation of the 4th. Pretty scary even though the case was won.
IANAL but from what I gather is basically the dissent is that the violation of the 4th isn't that *unreasonable* so it's ok.
(not to mention drug dogs are complete BS anyway)
I am glad to hear that the court ruled this way. My brother who is white was driving home from college with two of his black friends. They were pulled over and made to wait on the side of the highway while the county sheriff called for the narcotics dog. After several hours of waiting, and repeated passes of the dog on the car and my brother and his friends, they were all released with a broken tail light ticket.
Such over extension of a traffic stop mounts to a fishing expedition where cops/sheriffs hope to catch someone "in the act". In my brother's case, I guess they didn't like his friends since they kept pulling him aside to ask "how do you know these two?" Let's keep policing proper, people.
It's time we repeal the Fourth Amendment. Police need to be able to find all the criminals using any means necessary. Won't someone please think of the children!!
(And if you post arguments against this proposal, I'll push to repeal the First Amendment as well)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
We need to be able to station soldiers in people's houses to prevent crime in the first place.
Watching some of the videos people made of traffic stops and reading the stories you can tell that some of the dogs are trained to alert by their handler, not by what they sniff out on a search. Since that becomes probable cause they can do whatever they want. Enter civil forfeiture in all it's government sanctioned plundering.
I agree with the other comments that crooked police departments will stretch out the citation until another car with a dog just happens to be driving by the stop and decides to see what's going on. This doesn't change anything in those circumstances.
For all those who are innocent and falsely arrested because of these situations it will cost time and money to fight it and then to have the arrest sealed. For those who are doing illegal things it's going to be held up in court in some way or fashion.
The only way this would matter would be to put some teeth (pun kind of intended) into those situations where innocent people are impacted. Remove the arrest record, compensate for the false arrest, removal of the dog from the program, and sanctions for the arresting officers. Yeah right.
Note that I call out removing the arrest record or sealing it because just having been arrested can prevent people from getting jobs. Doesn't matter if it was a false arrest or not - it shows up. Especially if the police decide to make it a felony arrest because you know - drugs.
There's a very well run campaign to set the framework for the revolution, and you're buying their lies.
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.
I'd be fearing for my life
(not to mention drug dogs are complete BS anyway)
OK, I'll bite. Why are drug dogs "complete BS"? Dogs are demonstrably useful and effective in sniffing out all sorts of items. They are a well established tool in our legal system and for good reason. Clearly there was no probable cause to use a drug dog for a search in this case. That does not make drug sniffing dogs "complete BS".
It is great, that the Fourth Amendment still means something.
Now, how about the Second?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
It doesn't look like he was under the influence at the time, but the term "driving out of his lane" does kind of give reasonable cause for drug use, but maybe thats profiling.
The problem with this logic is that it fails the "prior probability" test.
Suppose a policeman searches and finds the suspect carrying a large amount of cash, say $4000. That's consistent with a (supposed) drug purchase, so the cash can be confiscated under asset forfeiture laws (assets used in the commission of a crime).
Suppose a policeman notes a youtube video of a chemistry experiment showing a balance scale, some beakers, and jars of chemicals. Those are consistent with "meth lab", so the policeman can search and confiscate all the equipment in the poster's house (this has happened).
The problem with each of these, and your position, is that there is significant prior probability that the behaviour in question is *not* indicative of criminal activity. You are reversing the conditional probabilities.
To put it in words, you are equating "probability of driving out-of-lane, given that he's on drugs" (quite high), with "probability that he's using drugs, given out-of-lane driving" (actually, quite low).
People temporarily drive out-of-lane a great deal to avoid animals and small obstacles, and people temporarily drive out-of-lane because they're distracted. The number of people out-of-lane because they're on drugs is vanishingly small.
Taken to extremes (and we know the police will do this), pretty-much *any* behaviour can be considered consistent with drug use.
In the case of the home lab above, it doesn't matter that the poster is missing key components, nor that he only has some of the ingredients. "Meth makers use glassware, he's got glassware, therefore he's a meth maker".
You see where this leads?
If a policeman observes a crime, take the appropriate action - that's fine. If he *observes* another crime while dealing with it, that's fine too.
But that's not a justification to rummage around in a person's rights just to see what can be pinned on the suspect.
If he doesn't observe a crime, he shouldn't go looking for one.
They'll find a way around this. Don't think anything has changed.
Yo Nerds -- you really need to at least glance at the decision before you all start condemning/praising the decision. In reality, this case is a big nothing-burger and does nothing to promote civil rights in America. The entire "meat" of the decision is in this paragraph:
What does this mean? It means that the officer was honest/stupid enough to say during the original trial that he had no "individualized suspicion" about this particular vehicle or this particular defendant. All the cop had to do was "articulate" an "individualized suspicion" about why he wanted to search the car with a drug-sniffing dog, and the whole case would have turned out differently. As it is, the case just gets remanded back to the lower court to look into the issue some more. Basically, the Supreme Court is inviting the 8th Circuit to come back with a finding that the cop probably had a reason to suspect drugs, and therefore everything was fine. This is anything but a sweeping victory for civil rights.
I'm too lazy to add anchor tags, but here are some references for you.
The UCDavis study is the best description of this -- when actually tested in scenarios designed to expose false positive results, that's EXACTLY what happened -- the dogs alerted in every place they shouldn't have and where the handler was given cues that the dogs would alert, the dogs were MORE likely to alert.
This is a huge problem with using dogs. It's not that dogs aren't good at sniff detection, its that dogs are so inclined to please their handlers that even when the handlers aren't purposefully lying they are still signaling their dogs that they should find something. So how do you separate out the dog actually sniffing out drugs versus the experienced profiling of the handler who expects their target to have drugs, gets a false alert from the dog and then discovers drugs from a hand search?
I don't think we CAN know if it was a legitimate signal from the dog or just the officer's experience that $Socialtype or $MinorityMember is very likely to have drugs.
It gets much, much worse if you take away the assumption that the cops/handler are 100% honest all the time. Do you really think that there isn't even some deliberate dishonesty with dogs? The worst outcome for the cops has been "well, the dog knows you had something in here but since I didn't find anything I'll let you go". The best outcome for the cops is that they get away with an illegal search that results in an arrest and conviction based on a dog's behavior that is beyond question, because, you know, dogs are so good at sniffing and its "a well established tool in our legal system and for good reason."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/w...
http://www.cato.org/blog/cleve...
Why repeal a law you can just ignore? The only reason this made it to the Supreme Court is that the officer acknowledged he held the suspect longer than necessary. Next time he'll take a little more time writing the ticket. This won't change until citizens are empowered to arrest police officers.
I do not block ads. I do block third party scripts.
"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"
WTF? "which promptly alerted to the presence of drugs". Which promptly alerted WHAT or WHOM? Fucking idiots.
"Upon search, the officers found".
WTF? Illiterate American cretins.
This was *already* the law, from a Supreme Court Case in 2005. Some of the lower courts had just messed it up by not following it--basically saying that a couple of minutes is okay and doesn't really count.
SCOTUS just benchslapped them, although politely. This is one of those "No, we actually meant what we said, now stop being so pro-law-enforcement that you read this out of the law. Yes. They're criminals. But there's still a Constitution, and you have to follow it."
Alcohol-sniffing dogs probably make Judge Ginsburg nervous:
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.c...
Table-ized A.I.
If anyone here doubts that a dog handler can intentionally or unintentionally cause a drug-sniffing dog to falsely alert, they need to look up the case of a horse named "Clever Hans". This was a horse that was able to solve simple arithmetic problems by stamping his hoof the correct number of times. The trick was that the horse never solved any problems. He was watching the questioner to see when he/she was satisfied with the number of hoof-stamps.
...when a dog trained and employed by the state can exchange your freedom, for 2 minutes of play time with his chew toy.
Who slipped reason juice in the SCOTUS water cooler this week?
Scalia and Thomas need to drink more.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
In my town, if you get pulled over and you live there or are known to the officer, you get your ticket and are on your way.
If you are from out of town, or unknown, you get the dog every single time.
Wife works there. I get all the good dirt.
I bet we would win back more civil rights if even half of these cases that went to the supreme court were ones where they guy whose rights were violated was not ACTUALLY GUILTY of a FELONY.
I mean I've got a lot more sympathy for a guy who was pulled over, run through the dog test for an hour and not found to have any drugs, then a guy who actually did have drugs.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Oh bull pussy. Any time we've got some controversial topic at-hand, you've had a job doing it. I don't care how old you might claim you are, but there's no way anyone has had as many jobs as you have.
There must have been an underlying reason for calling a dog & handler out, and in this case that suspicion was justified as drugs were found.
I am no judge, but the way I see it is this:
* if no drugs were found then the guy maybe has a case - waste of his time.
* if drugs were found then he has no case - the officer was correct and prevented illegal drugs going around, did his job.
If we apply this decision wider, everyone who has waited (a LOT longer than 8 minutes) at an airport because of everyone being under suspicion all the time every time.... where is the Supreme Court on that one?
One standard of law, applied consistently every time for every case. Its a dream, but we can have a dream, right? (MLK)
as are suspicious activities. In police states, such as the U.S.,objections are enough to provoke probable cause.