Justices decline to review use of drug-sniffing dogs

Houston man loses challenge to warrant based on use of canines

By ANDREW TILGHMAN
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

Law enforcement's authority to use drug-sniffing dogs was bolstered Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal of a Houston case in which police brought dogs onto a man's property and later obtained a search warrant for drugs.

The decision upholds the 2002 conviction of David Gregory Smith, 41, a Bandidos motorcycle gang member serving a 40-year sentence for running a methamphetamines lab in his southeast Houston home.

Smith's is the latest case to support police use of dogs while searching luggage, motor vehicles and homes for drugs. Smith's attorney, Kent Schaffer, said it sets a potentially worrisome precedent.

"I find that just absurd and extremely troubling that the police could take a dog and go to the front door of anybody's home, and if the dog scratches its tail or barks or winks or whatever, they can search your house," Schaffer said Monday.

The search of Smith's home near South Houston on Oct. 4, 2000, came after an 11-month law enforcement investigation into the gang. The dogs "alerted" when officers allowed them to sniff garage doors and house doors, and authorities used that information to obtain search warrants.

Cursory examination

At issue was whether the dogs' sniffing constituted an illegal search of Smith's home.

Assistant District Attorney Sally Ring said easily accessible parts of a home's exterior are subject to a cursory examination, such as a dog's sniff .

"It's akin to the Fed Ex guy or the flower delivery person; if they can go there, then law enforcement or anyone else can go there," said Ring, who prosecuted Smith's case in 2002.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected Smith's claim that the search by federal and local officials on the Harris County Organized Crime and Narcotics Task Force was illegal.

The state court ruled that the dogs were not intrusive enough to invoke constitutional protection. It also said police did not unlawfully trespass because the garage door was along a walkway that visitors must pass to reach the front door. There is little legal dispute that an alert from a narcotics dog is reason to grant a warrant, said professor Herman Schwartz of the American University law school.

"It's considered the equivalent of seeing something in plain view," Schwartz said. "There is sort of an assumption that the dogs are infallible."


Search tactics upheld

The U.S. Supreme Court has grown more accepting of police search tactics in recent years, and has repeatedly upheld the use of drug-sniffing dogs, Schwartz said.

Schwartz pointed to a 1983 case in which a suspected drug smuggler traveling through New York's LaGuardia airport was searched after a dog sniffed his luggage and alerted authorities to the presence of cocaine. The U.S. Supreme Court sided with police in that case.

The Harris County Sheriff's Department currently has two narcotics-trained dogs used by its detective bureau. The Houston Police Department uses narcotics-trained dogs only at its airport security units, officials said.

That's great that they are now teaching drug dogs to wink (with one eye?) as an alert. Sort of a sarcastic alert, if you will.

John,

Wasn't the "feather" part of that group?

No more... Jardines