A common scenario for drug dog sniffs that we hear all the time is when a person is stopped for a traffic violation, the officer asks for consent to search the car, the person (rightly) says NO, and the officer threatens to get the drug dog out there. Sound unfair? That's because it is - he can't do that without probable cause. Probable cause is more than a hunch. Probable cause is not the officer's opinion of the length of your hair, your tatoos, the color of your skin, or the shine of your rims.
If they need to get a dog out to the scene of their "investigation" they have every right to do it, so long as they have reasonable suspicion to continue detaining you, then in order to SEARCH, they need probable cause.
What if they get the dog out, and it "alerts" to an odor of drugs - do the police have the right to search then? Not neccessarily - dogs are not always accurate, and just because they smell drugs TODAY, doesn't neccessarily mean there's drugs in the car TODAY. For example, if you smoked in your car last week, the dog might alert, and there might be nothing illegal in your car at the time of the search.
Prior to last week - the District Courts of Appeal were all over the place with what could be considered probable cause to search based on the drug dog alert. Harris v. State, decided last week by the Florida Supreme Court, says that if the officer is basing his proable cause to search your car on the alert of a drug dog - Evidence of the dogs track record in the field must be proven by the State. That means, if you challenge your arrest based on an illegal search of the vehicle, the State has the burden of proving the reliablity of the dog, meaning how many times the dog alerts when drugs were actually found versus how many times the dog alerted when drugs weren't found.
So the point of all this legal mumbo jumbo for those reading is: If you're asked for consent to search you vehicle, it's your right to say NO. And if they bring a dog out to sniff, you might have a great motion to suppress whatever evidence was found in the vehicle. Of course, my first advice is not to get pulled over at all. Make sure you're not speeding, your tag's not expired, and your tail lights work.
If you think your car was searched illegally CALL US
