State trooper, in uniform, and all business, stops you for speeding, radios in to report his status, where he's stopped, etc. A drug dog-handling trooper hears the radio transmission, isn't busy at the moment, so he drives on over in the direction of the stop, runs Fido around your parked vehicle, while your ticket for speeding is written.
Fido alerts on the trunk of your car. Are you worried? Should you be? Only if you're harboring illegal narcotics.
The Supreme Court, this term, took on a Fourth Amendment issue that can be interpreted as offering another valuable law enforcement tool for fighting crime. The question: Is a dog sniff conducted during a lawful traffic stop, that uncovers nothing other than where your stash is hidden, in violation of the Constitution?
When considering the question, the Court limited its conclusion to an assumption that the original stop was lawful. If an individual is the victim of a capricious halt, you have a whole different set of questions to mull over. Of course, this does happen, and the proper recourse is to suppress any evidence gained from it. How long you're stopped is significant because the length of time helps determine how reasonable the stop is.
Let's say the trooper in the above scenario stops you, asks all the basic questions - may I see your driver's license, proof of insurance, where're you going? - that kind of thing. But then, he goes on to ask you questions about the contents of your car, how long you've been living somewhere, and on and on. Eventually, the dog-sniffing officer comes along, maybe an hour later, and the dog alerts on your trunk. Then what? I'd say you'd have a better case for an unreasonable search of your vehicle.
The Illinois case, on which the proposed facts above are based, involved a stop of no more than ten minutes. That includes the initial pull-over and Fido's business, which revealed a sizeable quantity of marijuana.
Ultimately, the Court held that a lawful stop - for speeding, failure to wear a seatbelt, failure to signal a lane change - that's not unreasonable in time and that reveals nothing but the illegal drugs the dog is trained to uncover, is not a constitutional violation.
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