Jim Dey: Inmate learns car sniff search not too doggone slow
Feb. 20—A dog's nose has passed the U.S. Constitution's smell test.
But what's the time limit on the use of drug-sniffing dogs to check out automobiles during a traffic stop?
An Indiana drug dealer named Adrian Johnson protested that an untimely dog sniff that sent him for federal prison for 15 years was constitutionally flawed. A federal appeals court concluded that it wasn't.
Why?
Welcome to another in our intermittent series of search-and-seizure brain teasers, where the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment prohibition against illegal searches and seizures comes face to face with law enforcement realities.
Remember, it's an important issue because everyone has a dog in this fight.
Here's what happened.
A police stop and search on an Indiana highway — aided by a doggie detective who smelled a meth-flavored rat — turned up illegal drugs, drug paraphernalia and two guns.
Trapped by the evidence, Johnson pleaded guilty, but with the proviso that he could ask the federal appeals court in Chicago to review the trial judge's decision that the evidence recovered from his vehicle was properly seized.
The appeals court, in a decision written by Justice Diane Wood, concluded the dog and his handler acted within the law.
Indiana sheriff's Deputy Matthew Haber said his attention was drawn to Johnson as his vehicle approached Haber's oncoming vehicle on Interstate 69 in DeKalb County. He testified he noticed that Johnson held his arm in a way that shielded his face from view.
That does not constitute probable cause to stop and search a vehicle. But it aroused enough concern with Haber that he turned his vehicle around and followed Johnson.
The deputy also ran a vehicle check and learned that Johnson was driving a car with an expired license plate.
(Note to aspiring criminals: When transporting illegal property, obey traffic laws. Many a mope has been sent to the joint because he was too dumb to abide by basic traffic rules.)
The expired plates provided Haber grounds to stop the vehicle. Then Johnson was unable to produce proper vehicle registration or a driver's license.
Haber then ran Johnson's identification and learned he had a suspended license as well as a prior conviction that made it a misdemeanor for him to drive.
While Haber took steps to impound the vehicle, a backup officer put Johnson in the backseat of her car.
Haber also brought out the drug-sniffing dog riding with him to conduct a sniff test. The dog alerted to the presence of methamphetamine.
By this point, Johnson was in trouble. On appeal, he had no issue with the constitutionality of the dog sniff, which was settled years ago by the U.S. Supreme Court in Illinois v. Caballos.
How did Johnson attempt to undermine the dog's fine work? He argued that Haber improperly prolonged the otherwise permissible stop "in order to conduct a dog sniff."
The court noted that a dog sniff becomes "problematic" when "an officer, having no basis to keep a suspect in place" delays matters "to give a trained dog time to arrive."
Johnson's problem was that Haber had the dog with him when he stopped Johnson. Besides, Johnson was already in custody for the violations police had discovered and would discover when they conducted the "required" inventory of the vehicle's contents that goes hand in hand with impoundment.
Because there was no delay, there was no harm and no foul.
Johnson would have been better served if he had devoted as much thought to traffic rules before the fact as he did to search-and-seizure law after the fact.
