The Supreme Court took up a case that might affect everyone’s rights
to privacy. The Court ruled that a positive alert by drug sniffing dogs
could warrant a search on a person’s vehicle even if an officer with
the dog didn’t have a real reason to investigate, other than having
a suspicion.

The reason that this ruling could be troubling is because of studies on
the accuracy of drug sniffing dogs and the fact that a simple event by
a dog could result in an otherwise unreasonable search of a person’s
vehicle. According to a 2006 study in Australian, the number of police
dogs that return a false-positive detection of drugs was between 44 and
93 percent. What do you think? Should police be able to search a vehicle
if a police dog detects the smell of an illegal substance?

What if you knew that the dog was wrong with its detection 93 percent of
the time? Some people may think that they have nothing to hide, so they
wouldn’t mind it. If the same was true about police entering a person’s
home, their reaction would likely be much different. Sometimes police
overstep their boundaries and can violate a person’s rights. This
means a person might be accused of a crime that they didn’t commit.

An experienced criminal defense attorney can help a person understand their
rights and work to form a rigorous defense. When a person’s rights
are violated, they may face unfair treatment and a wrongful conviction.

Source: Reason.com, “Where Does a Cop With an 80-Pound Dog Search? Anywhere he wants,” Jacob Sullum, Feb. 27, 2013

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