Two cases on the Supreme Court docket "present an aggressive challenge to the notion that a dog’s 'alert' to the presence of drugs is enough to legally justify a search of someone’s home or vehicle. Robert Barnes in the Washington Post has more.

  • fuzzyfuzzyfungus

    Your honor; ladies and gentlemen of the jury; I submit to your consideration the fact that drug sniffing dogs are far more adorable and fuzzy than dowsing rods.

  • el dueno

    Thus, “smell say” enters the court room with ample theories for lawyers to argue about.

  • noah django

    My buddy Knumskull has a great story about getting pulled over on tour with his band.  One highlight was that he had some really strong weed in his pocket.  However, the K9 took his command to search the *vehicle* literally and for whatever reason didn’t narc him out while standing outside during the search.  “The dog just looked at me.  It was obvious he smelled it.  *I* could smell it!”  There’s a bunch more to the story, but that’s the first time I heard of a false *negative* from a K9.

    there was also a local news item back in the 90s about a judge that took a K9 off the force since it was proved the dog’s accuracy was only 50%.  I think that dog’s name was Fred.

  • thecleaninglady

    Drug-sniffing, or falsely-drug-alerting-on-command dogs?

  • donovan acree

    It’s not the dogs who are untrustworthy. If they want to search you, those K9 cops will say the dog alerts whether it actually does or not. The dogs are just a convenience and a means to an end.