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Supreme Court Upholds Dog Search

By Jeralyn, Section Supreme Court
Posted on Tue Feb 19, 2013 at 02:46:12 PM EST
Tags: canine searches (all tags)
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The Supreme Court today issued its opinion in Florida v. Harris, ruling that extensive reliability evidence is not necessary for probable cause for a dog search. The opinion is here.

Justice Elena Kagan said the Florida court had gone too far, and suggested that proper training and certification of the dog — rather than how it has performed in the field — might be enough for law enforcement’s purposes.

[More...]

Essentially, the court is saying that the state does not have to produce a dog’s field performance records, including instances of false alerts, to establish reliability and defeat a motion to suppress evidence from a dog search.

Another dog sniff case, Florida v. Jardines, is still pending.

[Jardines] concerns whether police may bring a dog to someone’s home, and then use the dog’s “alert” to the presence of drugs as probable cause for getting a search warrant.
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    Supreme Court Upholds Dog Search | 21 comments (21 topical)

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    Diogenes, you really (5.00 / 1) (#3)
    by Zorba on Tue Feb 19, 2013 at 06:53:14 PM EST
    need to edit your quotes b