Pubdate: Wed, 27 Mar 2013
Source: Dallas Morning News (TX)
Copyright: 2013 The New York Times
Contact: http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/send-a-letter/
Website: http://www.dallasnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/117
Author: Adam Liptak, The New York Times
Page: 10A

RULING LIMITS USE OF DRUG-SNIFFING DOGS OUTSIDE HOMES

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

The case concerned Franky, a 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 found a marijuana-growing operation inside.

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 U.S. Supreme Court.

The 5-4 decision in the case 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.

Scalia said the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable 
searches, is particularly concerned with the home and its immediate 
surroundings. Allowing a dog on a 6-foot leash to roam outside a 
residence, he said, was "an unlicensed physical intrusion" that was 
different in kind from visits from, say, salesmen or trick-or-treaters.

"To find a visitor knocking on the door is routine (even if sometimes 
unwelcome)," 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."

Scalia grounded his opinion in property rights. In a concurrence, 
Kagan, joined by 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' privacy interests."

In dissent, Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Chief Justice John 
Roberts and justices Anthony Kennedy and Stephen 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," 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."
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