Those Doggone Sniffs Are Often Wrong: The Fourth Amendment Has Gone To The Dogs

The NACDL's journal has an article describing some of the ways in which defense counsel can challenge evidence from dog sniffs. Jeffrey S. Weiner & Kimberly Homan, Those Doggone Sniffs Are Often Wrong: The Fourth Amendment Has Gone To The Dogs, Champion, April 2006, at 12. Even well-trained dogs do not detect contraband with 100% accuracy. The authors praise Justice Souter's dissent in Illinois v. Caballas that said the idea of an infallible dog was "a creature of legal fiction." Moreover, there are significant subjective factors in the process. A dog alerting is not like a light going on -- it requires a trained handler, who interprets the dog's behavior as an "alert."

Filed in: NACDL, dogs, 4th-amendment, tips