Supreme Court hints at limits on dog sniffs for drugs

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - While considering whether a police dog should be allowed to sniff outside a home for illegal drugs inside, some U.S. Supreme Court justices smelled a rat.

At their Wednesday session, justices from across the ideological spectrum signaled that the privacy interest of a person in his home was too great to give police a broad license to let trained canines sniff around a home for evidence they could not see.

But in a second case involving a sniffer dog, some of the justices indicated they were hesitant to set too high a bar on police to show that their dogs are reliable.

The nine-member court has often allowed dog searches, including of luggage at airports and cars at checkpoints.

On Wednesday it addressed Florida's appeals of two decisions by the state's highest court that found the detection of drugs by trained police dogs violated the ban on unreasonable searches and seizures under the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment.

The first case focused on the location of the search, on the doorstep of a home, while the second was focused on whether the dog in question was sufficiently reliable.

REASONABLE EXPECTATIONS OF PRIVACY

In the first case, police let their chocolate Labrador retriever Franky sniff the base of the front door of Joelis Jardines' home near Miami after receiving an anonymous tip that marijuana was growing inside. Franky's "alert" led to the discovery of more than 25 pounds of marijuana inside.

At least six justices challenged some assertions by Gregory Garre, a former U.S. solicitor general arguing for Florida, who said drug detection dogs only reveal the presence of contraband, in which no one had a legitimate expectation of privacy.

"That just can't be a proposition that we can accept across the board," Justice Anthony Kennedy said.

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Supreme Court hints at limits on dog sniffs for drugs