Supreme Court- Fla V Jardines

[+Malamute]

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

 

FLORIDA v. JARDINES

 

 

 

Supreme Court: Police Dog Powers Do Not Include Warrantless Searches of a Person’s Home By: Kevin Gosztola Tuesday March 26, 2013 11:40 am

 

The Supreme Court has ruled in a 5-4 decision that when the government uses trained police dogs to investigate a home and its immediate surroundings it is a “search” under the Fourth Amendment.

The case involved the Miami-Dade Police Department and Drug Enforcement Administration responding to an “unverified tip that marijuana was being grown in the home” of Joelis Jardines. In 2006, a joint surveillance team watched Jardines’ home and then, seeing there was no activity around the house, Miami-Dade Detective William Pedraja approached the home with Detective Douglas Bartelt, who had arrived at the scene with a drug-sniffing dog.

 

The dog approached the front porch of Jardines’ house and sense an odor. The dog sniffed the base of the front door and, as trained, sat in front of the door. Bartelt returned to his vehicle and notified Pedraja of a “positive alert for narcotics” and Pedraja used what had been learned to apply and receive a warrant. It was executed and marijuana plants were found in the home.

 

Charged with “trafficking in cannabis,” Jardines moved to suppress evidence obtained without a warrant. The Florida Supreme Court ultimately determined “the use of the trained narcotics dog to investigate Jardines’ home was a Fourth Amendment search unsupported by probable cause, rendering invalid the warrant based upon information gathered in that search.”

 

Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the decision for the Supreme Court. He determined the officers had gathered information in an area “belonging to Jardines and immediately surrounding his house—in the curtilage of the house, which we have held enjoys protection as part of the home itself.” The officers “gathered that information by physically entering and occupying the area to engage in conduct not explicitly or implicitly permitted by the homeowner.”

 

Reaffirming some modicum of privacy protection in spite of the War on Drugs, Scalia declares:

 

Scalia notes that this case bore some similarity to a case involving warrantless GPS tracking last term, US v. Jones. In this case, the Court ruled “tracking an automobile’s whereabouts using a physically-mounted GPS receiver is a Fourth Amendment search.” The government’s argument was the defendant had “no reasonable expectation of privacy” when traveling on a public road. But, since the GPS receiver was physically mounted on to the defendant’s automobile, the Court ”held that tracking the vehicle’s movements was a search.”

[W]hen it comes to the Fourth Amendment, the home is first among equals. At the Amendment’s “very core” stands “the right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion.” Silverman v. United States, 365 U. S. 505, 511 (1961). 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; the right to retreat would be significantly diminished if the police could enter a man’s property to observe his repose from just outside the front window.

In both cases, evidence was gained by “physically intruding on constitutionally protected areas” and that is the key. The officers learned the information they used by “physically intruding on Jardines’ property to gather evidence.”

 

The government absurdly argued that “forensic dogs” had been “commonly used by police for centuries” to try and defend the unauthorized search, which Scalia flat-out rejects.

 

Briefly, Justice Samuel Alito wrote a dissenting opinion in support of granting law enforcement and government agents authoritarian powers:

Mail carriers or individuals delivering packages typically have no intent to engage in searches that would violate privacy. Visitors a person happens to be expecting are unlikely to conduct searches either. Police officers seeking information on an “occupant” may intend to conduct a search. All of these people can approach the house, but when the person they are looking for is not there, they cannot intrude on the property for their own purposes.

 

The law of trespass generally gives members of the public a license to use a walkway to approach the front door of a house and to remain there for a brief time. This license is not limited to persons who intend to speak to an occupant or who actually do so. (Mail carriers and persons delivering packages and flyers are examples of individuals who may lawfully approach a front door without intending to converse.) Nor is the license restricted to categories of visitors whom an occupant of the dwelling is likely to welcome; as the Court acknowledges, this license applies even to “solicitors, hawkers and peddlers of all kinds.”…And the license even extends to police officers who wish to gather evidence against an occupant (by asking potentially incriminating questions)…

 

“Dogs have been domesticated for about 12,000 years; they were ubiquitous in both this country and Britain at the time of the adoption of the Fourth Amendment; and their acute sense of smell has been used in law enforcement for centuries,” Alito argues.

Police batons have been in use since the Victorian Era in London. Its history does not give police the right to violate a person and beat him or her with it if the police decide that is what they want to do.

 

Alito concludes:

 

Authoritarian minds seek unbounded powers for law enforcement, whether it involves warrantless surveillance and/or unauthorized searches. Had police personally asked Jardines about the “unverified tip” that he was growing or trafficking marijuana, they might have witnessed body language or heard something that gave them probable cause to search his home with a warrant.

…f a dog’s nose is just like a thermal imaging device for Fourth Amendment purposes, a search would occur if a dog alerted while on a public sidewalk or in the corridor of an apartment building. And the same would be true if the dog was trained to sniff, not for marijuana, but for more dangerous quarry, such as explosives or for a violent fugitive or kidnaped [sp] child. I see no ground for hampering legitimate law enforcement in this way…

 

Finally, as Justice Elena Kagan wrote in a concurring opinion:

It is that clear and straightforward that a violation of rights occurred, which is why it is alarming that this was a 5-4 decision and Chief Justice John Robert, Justice Anthony Kennedy and Justice Stephen Breyer, along with Alito, dissented.

 

For me, a simple analogy clinches this case—and does so on privacy as well as property grounds. A stranger comes to the front door of your home carrying super-highpowered binoculars. He doesn’t knock or say hello. Instead, he stands on the porch and uses the binoculars to peer through your windows, into your home’s furthest corners. It doesn’t take long (the binoculars are really very fine): In just a couple of minutes, his uncommon behavior allows him to learn details of your life you disclose to no one. Has your “visitor” trespassed on your property, exceeding the license you have granted to members of the public to, say, drop off the mail or distribute campaign flyers? Yes, he has. And has he also invaded your “reasonable expectation of privacy,” by nosing into intimacies you sensibly thought protected from disclosure? Yes, of course, he has done that too.

 

[Highlander]

 he he.  "Jardines" is French for "Gardens."

[shredder0911]

I wish YT hadn't deleted the vids I posted of the Pinellas County SD (Fl) with their unmarked dog on my property, and the boss coming to knock on my door at roughly 03:30. Luckily I failed to respond to the rap to chat or knock to talk, and they didn't have a warrant!

[Michael Komorn]

 

USSC says dogs can pee on door but not sniff for probable cause, 4th amendment survives a little-

 

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/26/us-usa-court-dog-sniffs-idUSBRE92P0NE20130326

 

Supreme Court limits police use of drug-sniffing dogs

The Supreme Court on Tuesday limited the ability of police to use a trained dog to sniff around the outside of a home for illegal drugs that might be inside.By a 5-4 vote,

 

 

This case dealt with the home, and is distinguishable from a same term USSC opinion that went in favor of the dog when peeing and sniffing on automobiles. This case regarding the home found an expectation of privacy at the home and surrounding the home- dog sniffing not allowed at the home. The case dealing with the automobile and the dog sniffing found no expectation of privacy for the driver, and his/her vehicle. There remains a huge distinction between 4 th amendment protections on the road and at the home.

Very few if any out on the road, and a little bit more, but not much protecting the home. Interesting voting by the justices.

[shredder0911]

Not sure, but I think what I learned was to put up a fence with locked gate around your property, because they are not SUPPOSED to jump the fence to trespass and were caught doing so in at least one case where they were searching a shed illegally.

 

In addition, a little bottle of cayenne pepper powder around the bottom of all doors (including car) is good for some candid camera fun!

[cristinew]

i do not understand why a car would be no different than a home ,,, its your property they are searching without a warrant 

[Restorium2]

Legal marijuana posing problems for pot-sniffing dogs

Friday, March 22, 2013

Tags:

SEATTLE -- The state patrol and some other police agencies in Washington state are now training drug-sniffing dogs to ignore marijuana.

 

After voters in November legalized the possession of small amounts of the drug, the Washington Association of Prosecuting Attorneys advised police agencies to change their standards.

KOMO reports marijuana was removed from the police dog guidelines set by the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission.

The prosecuting attorneys' association also told police that an "alert" from a drug-sniffing dog that had been trained to find marijuana is no longer enough evidence for a search warrant. Police will need other evidence, at least until the old dogs retire.

 

http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/national_world&id=9037120

Edited March 27, 2013 by Restorium2

[greenbuddha]

Ain't freedom wonderful?

[shredder0911]

Hope I live long enough to let you know! [~}

Ain't freedom wonderful?