Pubdate: Thu, 01 Nov 2012
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2012 Los Angeles Times
Contact:  http://www.latimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Author: David G. Savage

JUSTICES WARY OF ALLOWING DRUG DOGS AT FRONT DOORS

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court justices spent part of their Halloween 
day debating whether visitors, including policemen with dogs, have a 
right to stand on the front porch of a house and knock on the door, 
or whether such unwanted visits may violate the rights of the homeowner.

The question arose in a case involving whether police may use a dog 
to sniff for illegal drugs at the front door of a home.

A lawyer defending a Florida police officer said that since 
trick-or-treaters can visit a front porch, so can a police officer 
with his trained dog.

"It's well-established, we think, going back to the common law, that 
there is an implied consent for people - visitors, salesmen, Girl 
Scouts, trick-or-treaters - to come to your house and knock on the 
door," said Washington attorney Gregory Garre.

But Garre ran into sharp opposition from most of the jurists, 
including Justice Antonin Scalia.

It is "not implied consent for the policeman to come up with the 
dog," said Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Scalia agreed. "When the officer's going there to conduct a search, 
it's not permitted," he said.

Garre was defending a Miami police officer who took his drug dog, 
Franky, to the front of a house searching for evidence of marijuana. 
When Franky gave his signal near the front door, the officer obtained 
a search warrant and found marijuana growing inside.

The Supreme Court took up the case to decide whether such an action 
violates the 4th Amendment's ban on unreasonable searches.

"In my neighborhood, neighbors can bring their dog up on the leash 
when they knock on your front door, and I think that's true in most 
neighborhoods in America," Garre said. "Homeowners that don't like 
dogs and want them off their property [can] put a fence around it to 
say, 'No dogs allowed.' "

"So now we tell all the drug dealers: Put up a sign that says 'No 
dogs'?" asked Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer said a homeowner "would resent someone 
coming up with a large animal sitting on a front step ... and 
sniffing for five to 15 minutes."

Ginsburg said that if the court were to approve this law enforcement 
tactic, police could "just go down the street, have the dog sniff in 
front of every door, or go into an apartment building."

Scalia, one of the court's conservative leaders, has drawn a line 
against searches that invade private space. In January, he wrote an 
opinion limiting law enforcement's use of GPS devices to track a 
car's movements. Putting the device on the vehicle was a "physical 
intrusion" into the owner's private property, he said.

A decade earlier, Scalia wrote a 5-4 opinion forbidding police from 
using a heat scanner to detect heat spots that might reveal indoor 
growing of marijuana.

On Wednesday, Scalia and the four liberal justices sounded as though 
they would limit police use of dogs around homes or apartments to 
sniff for illegal drugs.

But the justices suggested they were not inclined to require more 
proof that drug-sniffing dogs are usually right when they "alert" and 
trigger a search of a car or truck. Many police departments use 
trained dogs to sniff around cars that have been stopped along the 
road, and an alert from a dog gives an officer probable cause to search inside.

Last year, the Florida Supreme Court said it had doubts about the 
reliability of some police dogs, and it said officers must present 
data showing how well dogs do in detecting drugs.

That would "in effect put the dogs on trial," Garre said, urging the 
court to say police must show only that their dogs were well trained.
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