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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.
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.
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.
>> 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.
Hmm...actually the ruling is more narrow than that. The Court seems to be saying that if the police officer happens to have a dog on hand right now it can sniff around the car. But it is not reasonable to keep a citizen waiting around for the convenience of the police officer to use every possible implement that comes right up "to the line" of the citizen's rights.
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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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...
There is a lawyer who's doing some nice comics that explain all those intricacies - he has a strip covering dogs.
However, dogs are still BS, for the simple reason that a signal from the dog is considered to be probable cause, which is ridiculous because they can be conditioned quite easily to do so at the handler's signal (and often do it without the signal just to please the handler).
However dogs are nearly useless in this scenario. Its been shown that in a case where there is suspicion dogs "hit" nearly 100% of the time even in controlled situations where its known there is nothing for them to hit on. Dogs are only useful if the handler has no particular suspiscion or, in tracking. In these kinds of stops they are really just props.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Just so you know -- it isn't actually the same here. There's fairly well established case law involving if /police/ require RS. However... individuals /acting like/ police, that aren't actually police... that "just happen" to have an officer present have no such bar.
The particular example I'm thinking of is game and fish wardens, who can demand to search your trunk if you happen to be near a forest and it's hunting season. Or not hunting season but near hunting season and you left somewhere with deer. Oh, and by-the-way, there's an officer nearby who happens to be there for his protection -- and now that your trunk is open, all contents are in plain sight.
It's in state laws, it's been upheld on court challenge.
Additional problems include the 100 mile "border free zone" https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights-governments-100-mile-border-zone-map where any border patrol agent may search you for any reason. The population that has no 4th amendment right in this region exceeds 2/3 of the US (that's about 200 million people in case you wonder). Once again, the police might not have the right to search you without a warrant, but if it's customs, ice, border patrol or whatever -- they just might need police or DEA there for their protection.
So yes, you're sort of, just barely technically correct. But in practice, they can and will be present for a search without a warrant.