Friday, January 23, 2015

Dumb dog, why are you following me? SCOTUS to decide if cops can prolong traffic stop for a dog sniff

'You're the most presumin' dog that a human could know'
"[O]ne of the most shared experiences in our national culture is being stopped by the police while driving," wrote Rory Little at SCOTUSBlog, in an excellent summary and preview of oral arguments in Rodriguez v. United States, heard yesterday, which aims to decide whether a traffic stop may be prolonged without suspicion for eight minutes so a drug dog can be brought to the scene for a sniff.

Grits has long considered the nexus of issues surrounding drug-dog sniffs to be perhaps the most schizophrenic area of constitutional law: The Court has frustratingly insisted that dog sniffs aren't a "search" at your car on the side of the road but they are a search on the porch in front of your house. As search tech advances - there are numerous sensors that could mimic the dog's at-a-distance non-search search - the potential negative consequences from this outcome-driven approach become more severe. This case would be an excellent opportunity to bring the practice to heel. (Ba-dum-bum; insert mandatory audience groan here.)

Little's two pieces provide an excellent snapshot, ably presenting the legal posture of this pick-em case and its predecessors; give them a read. Here's the transcript from oral argument. MORE: See coverage from the Courthouse News Service and Bloomberg News. Reason highlighted this tidbit from Justice Sotomayor.

7 comments:

TriggerMortis said...

This republican dominated SCOTUS will without a doubt allow the prolonged stop for however long it takes. May even get a couple of of the left leaning justices to go along with their decision.

Of course their decision doesn't mean the act is constitutional, it just means these traitors have ruled it legal.

We have a lot of work to do once we take back this country...

Anonymous said...

Why should a traffic stop be prolonged to use a method that has an accuracy rate of between 15 and 20 percent when used on the general population. When used a population of which the police have already developed some suspicion, the accuracy rate jumps to between 40 and 60 percent - still not any better than a coin flip.

Lee said...

So are you being detained waiting on the side of the road for the dog to show up?

DEWEY said...

Apparently, drug searches are going to the dogs......

rodsmith said...

sorry in my book legally once they have went past the minimul time to issue a ticket say 7 min's. stop is done. At that point I have the legal right to leave even if I have to run their ass over.

Anonymous said...

Of course it is a search, but is it unreasonable?

Chris H said...

The public defender who argued against the prolonged detention did a horrible job.

He had an opportunity to argue that technological advancements should reign in the length of the detention. Instead he accepted that investigating whether a car was stolen or if the individual had warrants was a part of a "routine traffic stop".

A police officer can detain you for a reasonable time, to investigate crimes he has reasonable suspicion have occurred, are occurring or will occur.

The courts have allowed the warrant search and the stolen car lookup because the officer was waiting for research as to whether the license presented was valid.

Now that technology can more efficiently determine the validity of the license and the officer does not have reasonable suspicion that the individual has warrants or that the car is stolen, each of those events are prolonging the detention and should therefore be considered unreasonable and by extension, unconstitutional