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Sniff Me, Lisa Madigan

By Margaret Lyons in News on Nov 11, 2004 5:56PM

Sit. Stay. Smell drugs. Image: http://www.interquestk9.com"A sniff is not a search," according to Lisa Madigan in her arguments for the State of Illinois in front of the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday. Illinois v. Caballes is, according to the Trib, one of the most important cases the Supreme Court will hear this session, and it all started right here on I-80 in LaSalle County.

Roy Caballes was pulled over for going 71 in a 65 (sucks so hard) in 1998. A state trooper indicated he would let Cabelles off with a warning and was filling out some paperwork when a second trooper arrived. This trooper had a drug-sniffing dog with him, and the dog detected drugs; officers discovered 282 pounds of weed in the trunk of Cabelles's car. Aside: holy shit, that is so much weed! Ahem, back to our case. The first officer did not summon the second, nor did either officer indicate suspicion of criminal activity. Does a dog sniff constitute a search? Illinois via Madigan says no, Caballes and his attorneys say yes. If it does, then it requires justification under the Fourth Amendment.

If a dog sniff isn't a search, what is it? Apparently Justice Breyer thinks it's the same as a police officer wearing glasses—the police can use their own noses; why not a dog's? We're sniffed for explosives all the time, right? Bus stations, borders, airports—are those all searches for which the police should obtain a warrant? But if it's not a search, then the police can just walk around with drug-sniffing dogs all the time, sniffing anyone, anywhere for no reason. Gung gung gunnngg! That's the ominous gong possible rights violations, btw.

Watch Chicagoist pine for a conlaw class after the jump...

Holla atcha, Supreme Court; Image: http://www.tlpj.orgMuch of the caselaw relevant here indicates that dog sniffs are not searches. In U.S. v. Place, the Court ruled that

A "canine sniff" by a well-trained narcotics detection dog, however, does not require opening the luggage. It does not expose noncontraband items that otherwise would remain hidden from public view, as does, for example, an officer's rummaging through the contents of the luggage. Thus, the manner in which information is obtained through this investigative technique is much less intrusive than a typical search. Moreover, the sniff discloses only the presence or absence of narcotics, a contraband item. Thus, despite the fact that the sniff tells the authorities something about the contents of the luggage, the information obtained is limited. This limited disclosure also ensures that the owner of the property is not subjected to the embarrassment and inconvenience entailed in less discriminate and more intrusive investigative methods.

But Place occurred in an airport, where according to Cabelles's lawyers, there's a different expectation of privacy. Incidentally, though the Court ruled that the sniff wasn't a search, they still overturned Place's conviction because the seizure of his luggage was unreasonable.

In a dissenting opinion in Doe v. Renfrow, Justice Brennan argued that a dog sniff of your person did constitute a search. That case also involved drug-sniffing dogs, this time in a junior high and high school (don't even get us started on constitutional rights in public schools, holy jeeze); Brennan was "astonished that the court did not find that the school's use of the dogs constituted an invasion of petitioner's reasonable expectation of privacy."

Seriously? We could do this all day. We especially loved this article. Also, is it just us, or does the Supreme Court have like, the shittiest website ever? Jeeze louise.