Pubdate: Wed, 27 Mar 2013
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2013 The New York Times Company
Contact: http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/lettertoeditor.html
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Adam Liptak

JUSTICES, CITING BAN ON UNREASONABLE SEARCHES, LIMIT USE OF DRUG-SNIFFING DOGS

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Tuesday limited the ability of the 
police to use drug-sniffing dogs outside homes.

The case concerned Franky, a chocolate Labrador retriever who 
detected the smell of marijuana outside a Florida house used by 
Joelis Jardines. Based on Franky's signal, the police obtained a 
warrant to search the house, and they found a marijuana-growing 
operation inside.

Mr. Jardines moved to suppress the evidence, saying that using Franky 
to sniff around his residence was an unreasonable search barred by 
the Fourth Amendment. The Florida Supreme Court agreed, and so did a 
majority of the United States Supreme Court.

The 5-to-4 decision in the case, Florida v. Jardines, No. 11-564, 
featured an unusual alignment of justices. Justice Antonin Scalia, a 
member of the court's conservative wing, wrote the majority decision. 
He was joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, a frequent ally, along with 
three of the court's more liberal members, Justices Ruth Bader 
Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

Justice Scalia said the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits 
unreasonable searches, is particularly concerned with the home and 
its immediate surroundings. Allowing a dog on a six-foot leash to 
roam outside a residence, he said, was "an unlicensed physical 
intrusion" that was different in kind from visits from, say, 
salesmen, Girl Scouts or trick-or-treaters.

"To find a visitor knocking on the door is routine (even if sometimes 
unwelcome)," Justice Scalia wrote. "To spot that same visitor 
exploring the front porch with a metal detector, or marching his 
bloodhound into the garden before saying hello and asking permission, 
would inspire most of us to - well, call the police."

Justice Scalia grounded his opinion in property rights. In a 
concurrence, Justice Kagan, joined by Justices Ginsburg and 
Sotomayor, said she would also have relied on a second rationale. "I 
would just as happily have decided it," she said of the case, "by 
looking to Jardines's privacy interests."

In dissent, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., joined by Chief Justice John 
G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Anthony M. Kennedy and Stephen G. Breyer, 
said neither rationale was sufficient to convert a visit by a man and 
a dog into a search.

"A reasonable person understands that odors emanating from a house 
may be detected from locations that are open to the public," Justice 
Alito wrote, "and a reasonable person will not count on the strength 
of those odors remaining within the range that, while detectable by a 
dog, cannot be smelled by a human."
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom