Dog-sniff cases debated as high court weighs privacy

The U.S. Supreme Court debated what limits should apply to the use of police dogs trained to sniff out illegal drugs, as the justices sought to balance privacy interests against the needs of law enforcement agencies.

Hearing arguments Wednesday in Washington, several justices questioned whether the Constitution lets officers bring a trained dog to the door of a house in the hope the animal might detect narcotics. While the court has previously said that officers can walk onto a suspect’s property in order to knock on the door, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that the use of trained dogs was different.

“The only reason for having the dog is to find out if there’s contraband in the house,” Ginsburg said.

The court also heard a second dog-sniff case, on whether a trained dog’s alert outside a stopped car is sufficient grounds for the police to conduct a full-scale search of the vehicle.

The two-hour session suggested greater concern among the justices for privacy rights in the home over such rights in the car. Justice Antonin Scalia pointed to Supreme Court precedents that limit the ability of police officers to walk onto a house’s surrounding land.

“Why isn’t it the same thing with the dog?” Scalia asked. “This dog was brought right up to the door of the house.”

The justices are considering a bid by Florida officials to revive the prosecution of a man arrested after police raided a Miami house and found marijuana plants.

The Florida Supreme Court said prosecutors couldn’t use evidence obtained in the house because officers violated the U.S. constitutional ban on unreasonable searches.

Miami-Dade police began focusing on the house after receiving a tip that Joelis Jardines was growing marijuana there. A month later, two detectives went to the front porch with a drug-sniffing dog, named Franky, who “alerted” at the door. One of the detectives said he also noticed the smell of marijuana.

The officers then left to get a search warrant before entering the house and discovering the plants. Jardines was charged with trafficking cannabis and stealing electricity to grow the marijuana.

The second case, also from Florida, involved the use of a trained dog after a police officer stopped Clayton Harris for driving his pickup truck with an expired license plate. After the dog, named Aldo, alerted by the driver’s-side door handle, the officer concluded that he had the legal right to search the truck.

The search produced ingredients for making methamphetamine, and Harris later admitted that he had purchased the items to make the drug. The Florida Supreme Court struck down Harris’s conviction, saying the government didn’t do enough to show that the dog could reliably detect illegal drugs.

Several justices on Wednesday said the Florida court may have gone too far by requiring prosecutors to provide evidence that an animal had performed well in field tests.

The cases are Florida v. Jardines, 11-564, and Florida v. Harris, 11-817.