High Court Backs Use of Drug Dogs

Using a police dog to sniff a car’s exterior for drugs does not violate the privacy rights of a stopped motorist, the Supreme Court ruled Monday, even if the officers had no reason to suspect the car or its occupants were carrying drugs.

When added to prior rulings, the high court’s 6-2 decision appears to give police broad, but not unlimited, authority to use canines to sniff for drugs -- or bombs -- whether on roads or in schools, airports and office buildings.

Although the case before the court was argued as a test of police power in the war on drugs, dogs also can play a role in the war on terrorism. In recent years, trained dogs have been used increasingly at airports and the borders to sniff for explosives, and the justices made clear they would not stand in the way of searches intended to protect the public’s safety.

The case tested a common situation on streets and highways, and one that had divided the lower courts.

In 1998, an Illinois state trooper stopped a motorist on Interstate 80 for speeding. The driver, Ray Caballes, was clocked traveling 71 mph where the speed limit was 65.

As the trooper wrote a warning ticket, a second trooper who had heard the radio transmission headed for the scene with a drug-sniffing dog.

In less than 10 minutes, the trooper arrived with the dog, which walked around the vehicle and reacted to the trunk.

Normally, police cannot open a locked trunk without probable cause to think it contains something illegal. But the dog’s alert supplied what the officers considered probable cause, and they opened the trunk and found 282 pounds of marijuana. Caballes was convicted on a drug trafficking charge and sentenced to 12 years in prison. The sentence was stayed pending appeal.

Caballes challenged the use of the police dog as an “unreasonable search,” a violation of his rights under the 4th Amendment. The Illinois Supreme Court agreed with Caballes and ruled that the police violated his rights by turning a traffic stop into a drug search.

The Supreme Court took up the case of Illinois vs. Caballes to decide whether police needed evidence of a crime before they used a sniffing dog. In its decision, the court said the police may use a dog, so long as they had a reasonable basis for stopping a motorist or a pedestrian.

“In our view, conducting a dog sniff would not change the character of a traffic stop that is lawful at its inception and otherwise executed in a reasonable manner,” Justice John Paul Stevens said for the court.

It would have been a different matter, he said, if the first police officer had held the motorist for some time while he awaited the arrival of the second officer and his dog.

“A seizure [of the motorist] can become unlawful if it is prolonged beyond the time reasonably required to complete that mission” of writing a ticket, he said.

Bush administration lawyers joined the case on the side of Illinois prosecutors, and they stressed that federal agents used dogs to sniff for explosives and concealed weapons. During the oral arguments in the case, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor pointed out that cars were routinely stopped on Capitol Hill so that trained dogs can circle them. No one could maintain these brief stops violated the rights of the motorists, she said.

Monday’s decision began with the premise that the police had a valid reason to stop the motorist for speeding. A sniffing dog does not turn a “lawful traffic stop” into an unconstitutional search and seizure, the justices concluded.

Stevens described the court’s ruling as “narrow,” but he put forth an open-ended rationale for justifying the search in this case.

Targeted searches are unconstitutional only if they violate a “legitimate” privacy interest, he wrote, adding that no one has a legitimate interest in possessing illegal drugs or explosives. Already, courts have given police considerable leeway in searches of such places as schools and airports.

The two dissenters, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David H. Souter, said this rationale invited the police to conduct much wider searches by using sniffing dogs.

“Today’s decision clears the way for suspicionless, dog-accompanied drug sweeps on parked cars along sidewalks and in parking lots,” Ginsburg said.

Souter agreed, saying he feared the ruling may lead to “indiscriminate sweeps of ... pedestrians on sidewalks.”

The high court did not retreat from a ruling five years ago that barred the police from setting up narcotics checkpoints on a city’s streets, where all vehicles would be stopped. Such stops are unconstitutional, O’Connor said then, because the police did not have reason to detain motorists.

State prosecutors applauded Monday’s ruling for upholding an effective tool in their war against drugs. A dog sniffing around a car or suitcase does not intrude on the privacy of motorists or travelers, they said.

“This decision is a critical victory for law enforcement in Illinois and across the nation in their work to reduce trafficking of illegal drugs,” said Illinois Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan. “Although such [canine] units are used infrequently, their impact in terms of seizure of drugs and drug money has been extremely significant.”

In Los Angeles, a police spokesman said dogs were not used in routine traffic stops.

“We don’t have a practice of making this use of drug-sniffing dogs,” said Assistant Chief George Gascon of the Los Angeles Police Department. “Therefore operationally, it won’t have an impact.”

Civil libertarians and defense lawyers said the ruling was a step toward converting routine traffic stops into full-fledged searches. They also predicted it would lead to more targeting of racial minorities and out-of-state drivers.

“We are disappointed that the Supreme Court today exposes all motorists across Illinois, and the rest of the nation, to unnecessary, intimidating searches by drug-sniffing dogs,” said Harvey Grossman, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois.

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, ailing with thyroid cancer, was absent and took no part in the decision.