Look like the good guys might win one! http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/decision2012/supreme-court-is-asked-to-be-skeptical-of-drug-sniffing-dogs/2012/10/30/5b181110-2125-11e2-8448-81b1ce7d6978_story.html The Washington Post Supreme Court is asked to be skeptical of drug-sniffing dogs By Robert Barnes, Published: October 30 NEW SMYRNA BEACH, Fla. — Aldo the German shepherd and Franky the chocolate Lab are drug-detecting dogs who have been retired to opposite ends of the ultimate retiree state. But their work is still being evaluated, and on Wednesday it will be before the Supreme Court. The justices must decide whether man’s best friend is an honest broker as blind to prejudice as Lady Justice, or as prone as the rest of us to a bad day at the office or the manipulation of our partners. The Supreme Court in the past has tended to agree with the first view. Justice John Paul Stevens, now retired, wrote for the court in a 2005 case that a drug-sniffing dog reveals “no information other than the location of a substance that no individual has any right to possess.” But the two cases on the docket present an aggressive challenge to the notion that a dog’s “alert” to the presence of drugs is enough to legally justify a search of someone’s home or vehicle. Florida v. Jardines asks whether it was constitutional for Miami-Dade County police, acting on a tip, to bring Franky to Joelis Jardines’s front door. Franky alerted to the smell of marijuana, the police used that to obtain a warrant, and Jardines was arrested on suspicion of turning his home into a “grow house.” Florida v. Harris asks a more basic question of whether judges should be skeptical of Fido’s qualifications. It builds on research that shows a high rate of false alerts and cases of manipulation by a dog’s handler. Justice David H. Souter, also now retired, sounded the alarm about the reliability of police canines in his dissent in the 2005 case, writing that the “infallible dog . . . is a creation of legal fiction.” The Florida Supreme Court went further last year in the Harris case when it threw out the evidence in a 2006 traffic stop in the Florida Panhandle that featured Aldo. “Courts often accept the mythic dog with an almost superstitious faith,” Justice Barbara J. Pariente wrote. “The myth so completely has dominated the judicial psyche in those cases that the courts either assume the reliability of the sniff or address the question cursorily; the dog is the clear and consistent winner.” The Florida court said that judges should look at the “totality of circumstances,” including a dog’s training and certification records, field performance, and evidence of the handler’s training and experience. Bill Heiser, founder of Southern Coast K9, is helping to raise the next generation of Aldos and Frankys on 12 acres of sandy soil in central Florida. He agrees that training and handling are key. It takes about four months — training four or five times a day — to produce a dog for law enforcement. The dogs at Southern Coast work for the attention of their handlers — “Mom” or “Dad,” Heiser calls them — and receive it and their toy only when they have properly alerted to the scent of the drugs they are taught to detect. He demonstrates how a fox-red Lab named Rowdy races through a room filled with distractions and sticks his nose in identical boxes containing a tennis ball, his toy of choice. But he stops and sits only at the box that also contains dope — Heiser uses real drugs, obtained from law enforcement — and waits for his trainer’s praise. If a dog is properly trained, Heiser said, a bag of McDonald’s fare won’t distract him, a female’s scent won’t delay him, a suspect’s looks won’t interest him. “He doesn’t know he’s finding cocaine or heroin or marijuana or meth or crack cocaine,” Heiser said. “All he knows is ‘That odor means my toy’s there. And if I do what I’m supposed to do, what I’m trained to do, Mom gets involved or Dad gets involved.’ That’s what he works for, that love and attention.” The state of Florida, backed by the Obama administration, said such training and certification should be enough for courts. The kind of “novel, sniff-by-sniff records” the Florida Supreme Court would require would overburden law enforcement and “upend settled law across the nation,” the state said in a brief written by Gregory G. Garre, who served as solicitor general in the George W. Bush administration. But the law professors, civil libertarians and criminal defense lawyers who support Clayton Harris, the man stopped by Aldo’s handler, Liberty County officer William Wheetley, say that Florida’s proposed standard is not enough. For one thing, no national standard for certification exists. “There’s no such thing as a well-trained narcotics detection dog,” said Jeffrey Weiner, a criminal defense lawyer from Miami. “It means whatever a trial judge or appellate judge or Supreme Court justice wants it to mean.” Glen Gifford, Harris’s attorney, told the justices in his brief that Aldo’s certification was out of date and that there was no real record of how he and Wheetley worked together. Aldo alerted to the scent of drugs on the handle of Harris’s vehicle, and a search found the ingredients for methamphetamine inside. But in the tiny town of Bristol, that was not the only time Wheetley had pulled Harris over. And Aldo alerted to drugs that time, too, but a search came up empty. That could simply mean that drugs had recently been in the truck but were now removed, or that they were expertly hidden. But Gifford points to other research that says dogs can alert to other scents or simply have bad days. And a study last year at the University of California at Davis — disputed by some in the dog-handling industry — was mentioned in several briefs. It indicated that handlers had much to do with when a dog alerted. It brought together 18 K-9 teams and ran them through a test facility at which the handlers had been told that some targets had been marked and some had not. Together, the teams racked up 225 false alerts. Only one team was perfect. It was the one that did not alert at all, because there were no drugs in the facility.
Thanks for posting, wonder if/what they will do about it. also wonder if the false alerts is possible to use in court to have convictions over turned because it gives the probable cause to search in the first place.
They've retired for verdict so we'll know in a while. If'n I was up for a drug dog bust I'd be having my attorney ask for a postponement until the Court rules. Last year we had a similar State Supreme Court challenge over the accuracy of portable breath analyzers in field use. Every DUI case on the docket was granted a postponement if the defense had enough gumption to ask for it. Here's hopin! It's my one big worry now, that random knock from a cop with a pooch. Fuck the grow, a dog could pick up weed at my front door simply because my cupboards are filled with the shit and I'm toking every night.
Here's a pdf of the UC Davis study that is at the base for the case. Something any good pot smoker already knew, but, it's nice to see it quantified. http://www.npca.net/Files/SWGDOG/LIT%20Study.pdf
Too me. Know I'm beating an issue here but been finding drug dog debunking fascinating. Here's an audio lecture concerning cross examination and criminal defense in attorneys beating of drug dog based searches. I want this guy if I ever get in trouble again! He got an Oklahoma guy off from a couple kilos of coke by disqualifying the dog's alert. :flipando: Around 31 minutes in he tells the story. The wildest thing is the ability to argue the legality of search warrants that include general or specific statements to drug dog reliability. If you disqualify the warrant based on that erroneous info any evidence is tainted. Fucking Johnny Cochran of drug crime.:thumbs-up: http://audio.norml.org/events/Aspen_2008-Dan_Monnat.mp3
Store your shit in glass jars! Somebody and you and I both know him well had drug dogs hit his outfit. They had no clue what was in the jars ha ha t6
I do I do! I just open them so frequently it's kind of a futile affair. You talk to the hippie child lately?
Ya know I have been so fuckin busy farming and trying to buy A Indian Motorcycle that I have forgot about calling him. Need to check on that guy!! t6
i had a dog run thru my jeep years ago, fucker missed 4 rolled joints in the center console and a corner bag of coke in the door pocket I got a tint ticket......ROFL!!!
fuck thats funny!! Years ago I was speeding in my hot rod jeep and a state cop pulled me over. I had a radio mike clip right next to the window on the dash. On top of the mike clip I had stuck a wad of Hash about the size of a golf ball wrapped in tin foil that I had been smokeing out of. I had a vinal top on the jeep and rolled down the window. The fuckin cop stuck his head in the window and the hash was like 6 inches from the side of his face and he never saw it. I laughed at the ticket and smoked all the way home. t6
The only real problem with the premise of the argument is that regardless if they get the warrant on a trumped up dog sniff. When they come in and toss the place and find whatever it's really not going to matter. You can claim whatever you want but the fact of the matter is if they get the warrant and find a grow or quantity it's hard to argue procedure. Probable cause is a motherfucker. This may work in some cases to get off but you're going to have to run some juice to the other side to make this work. I doubt your getting acquitted straight up for a few pounds on a " Dog could have been influenced" defense. Just my thoughts...Steel
In the discussion he outlines two examples where he's done just that. One in Vail on a client whose warrant was based on a dog alert and another in Oklahoma with two kilos of coke found in the trunk of a car at a drug enforcement traffic check. In the two cases that are being used for Supreme Court challenge both were elevated due to conflicting appeals with evidence having been thrown out on that very premise. It's actually happening and being used as a viable defense tactic.
