Can dogs search cars on traffic stops?
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-2 on January 24th 2005 that using a police dog to detect drugs during a routine traffic stop does not violate the Constitution. Justice John Paul Stevens said in his majority opinion using a dog, even without a warrant, to sniff the exterior of a vehicle during a routine traffic stop “generally does not implicate legitimate privacy interests.” A state trooper stopped Roy Caballes for speeding in LaSalle County, Ill., in 1998. However, the trooper discovered from the radio dispatcher that Caballes had two prior arrests for the distribution of marijuana. The trooper called in a drug-sniffing dog, which helped find a large quantity of marijuana in Caballes’s trunk. A divided Illinois Supreme Court ruled the search was unconstitutional, but the U.S. Supreme Court threw out that decision, and ordered the state court to come up with a ruling consistent with Monday’s majority opinion. Today, even with advanced technological tools, the Police Dog is irreplaceable
