What the hell is wrong with the Supreme Court?

The Supreme Court yesterday declined to consider whether police can have drug dogs sniff outside people’s homes without any specific suspicion of illegal activity.

Justices let stand a lower-court ruling that allowed the dog sniff, rejecting an appeal from a Houston man who said it was an improper police search that violated his Fourth Amendment right against arbitrary searches.

[...]

David Gregory Smith challenged his Texas conviction for drug possession based on evidence obtained after a police dog sniffed outside his garage and alerted authorities to possible drugs inside. After the dog’s alert, police obtained a search warrant and found methamphetamine in his bedroom, far from the garage.

“The use of a drug-sniffing dog at the entrance of a private home to detect the contents of the dwelling strips the citizenry of the most basic boundary of personal privacy by gathering invisible information coming from the interior of the home,” the petition states.

Does the Fourth Amendment mean a damn thing anymore? Obviously not.

Given the ease with which police dogs can “alert” to the presence of drugs, cops basically have carte blanche to search us any time, anywhere, for any reason.

The Fourth Amendment is dead.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 5th, 2005 at 10:22 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.