Supreme Court: Alert by a Trained or Certified Drug Dog Normally Provides Probable Cause

Yesterday, the Supreme Court decided Florida v. Harris, holding that when a trained and certified drug dog alerts on a vehicle, that normally provides probable cause to search the car, even if there are no records proving that the dog has previously performed well at detecting drugs in the field. I mentioned Harris in my Supreme Court preview, here, and in a long prior post about the reliability of drug-sniffing dogs, here, so I have been awaiting the opinion. Facts. The case arose when a Florida K-9 officer executed a routine traffic stop on the defendant’s truck. The defendant appeared nervous and there was an open beer can in the vehicle, so the officer asked for consent to search. The defendant refused. The officer walked his drug dog around the vehicle and the dog alerted. The officer searched based on the alert; he found no drugs but did find 200 pseudoephedrine pills, 8,000 matches, and other ingredients for manufacturing methamphetamine. The defendant was arrested and charged based on possession of those ingredients. Later, while the defendant was out on bail, the officer stopped him again for a traffic violation, the dog alerted again, and the officer searched again, but found nothing of interest in the vehicle. Motion to suppress. In court, the defendant moved to suppress the pseudoephedrine and other items found in the initial search. The state showed that the dog had completed a 120-hour police-run training course; that the dog had previously been certified by a private dog training [...]