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The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld a Florida high court ruling limiting the use of drug-sniffing police dogs outside homes.
The Florida Supreme Court in April 2011 had ruled that Miami-Dade police violated a man’s right to privacy when they used a police dog outside the front door without a search warrant.
The man, Joelis Jardines, had challenged his arrest for marijuana trafficking. In Jardines’ case, Miami-Dade detectives zeroed in on his house after they were tipped off by an anonymous caller to the “CrimeStoppers” hotline. One month later, detectives and agents employed a drug detection dog, Franky, who alerted his handler to the smell of marijuana emanating from the front door.
With that, detectives secured a search warrant and Jardines was arrested.
U.S. Justice Antonin Scalia, writing the majority opinion, said that the use of police dogs outside a person’s home indeed constitutes “a search” under the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, which guards against unreasonable searches and seizures.
“This right would be of little practical value if the state’s agents could stand in a home’s porch or side garden and trawl for evidence with impunity,” Scalia wrote.
Scalia was joined by justices Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. Dissenting were Samuel Alito, John Roberts, Anthony Kennedy and Stephen Breyer.
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/03/26/3307280/in-miami-case-us-supreme-court.html#storylink=cpy
The Florida Supreme Court in April 2011 had ruled that Miami-Dade police violated a man’s right to privacy when they used a police dog outside the front door without a search warrant.
The man, Joelis Jardines, had challenged his arrest for marijuana trafficking. In Jardines’ case, Miami-Dade detectives zeroed in on his house after they were tipped off by an anonymous caller to the “CrimeStoppers” hotline. One month later, detectives and agents employed a drug detection dog, Franky, who alerted his handler to the smell of marijuana emanating from the front door.
With that, detectives secured a search warrant and Jardines was arrested.
U.S. Justice Antonin Scalia, writing the majority opinion, said that the use of police dogs outside a person’s home indeed constitutes “a search” under the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, which guards against unreasonable searches and seizures.
“This right would be of little practical value if the state’s agents could stand in a home’s porch or side garden and trawl for evidence with impunity,” Scalia wrote.
Scalia was joined by justices Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. Dissenting were Samuel Alito, John Roberts, Anthony Kennedy and Stephen Breyer.
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/03/26/3307280/in-miami-case-us-supreme-court.html#storylink=cpy