Supreme Court upholds probable cause from drug dog alert.

The U.S. Supreme unanimouslly Court refused to adopt a new, tougher 4th Amend. standards for finding probable cause from a drug dog alert. The other case on drug dogs (Florida v. Jardines) has not been decided yet.


"SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

Syllabus

FLORIDA v. HARRIS

CERTIORARI TO THE SUPREME COURT OF FLORIDA

No. 11–817. Argued October 31, 2012—Decided February 19, 2013

Officer Wheetley pulled over respondent Harris for a routine traffic stop. Observing Harris’s nervousness and an open beer can, Wheetley sought consent to search Harris’s truck. When Harris refused, Wheetley executed a sniff test with his trained narcotics dog, Aldo.The dog alerted at the driver’s-side door handle, leading Wheetley to conclude that he had probable cause for a search. That search turned up nothing Aldo was trained to detect, but did reveal pseudoephedrine and other ingredients for manufacturing methamphetamine. Harris was arrested and charged with illegal possession of those ingredients. In a subsequent stop while Harris was out on bail, Aldo again alerted on Harris’s truck but nothing of interest was found. At a suppression hearing, Wheetley testified about his and Aldo’s extensive training in drug detection. Harris’s attorney did not contest the quality of that training, focusing instead on Aldo’s certification and performance in the field, particularly in the two stops of Harris’s truck. The trial court denied the motion to suppress, but the FloridaSupreme Court reversed. It held that a wide array of evidence was always necessary to establish probable cause, including fieldperformance records showing how many times the dog has falsely alerted. If an officer like Wheetley failed to keep such records, he could never have probable cause to think the dog a reliable indicatorof drugs.

Held: Because training and testing records supported Aldo’s reliability in detecting drugs and Harris failed to undermine that evidence, Wheetley had probable cause to search Harris’s truck. Pp. 5–11.

(a) In testing whether an officer has probable cause to conduct a search, all that is required is the kind of “fair probability” on which “reasonable and prudent [people] act.” Illinois v. Gates, 462 U. S. 213, 235. To evaluate whether the State has met this practical and common-sensical standard, this Court has consistently looked to the totality of the circumstances and rejected rigid rules, bright-linetests, and mechanistic inquiries. Ibid.The Florida Supreme Court flouted this established approach by creating a strict evidentiary checklist to assess a drug-detection dog’sreliability. Requiring the State to introduce comprehensive documentation of the dog’s prior hits and misses in the field, and holding that absent field records will preclude a finding of probable cause nomatter how much other proof the State offers, is the antithesis of atotality-of-the-circumstances approach."