Supreme Court addresses dog sniffs for drugs

The Supreme Court decided Feb. 13, 2013 that the government's failure to produce a drug-detection dog's field performance records does not preclude a finding of probable cause to search. In Florida v. Harris, the Court reversed a Florida Supreme Court ruling that, in every case, the government has to produce records, including a log of a drug dog's field performance, in order to establish the dog's reliability. In that case, a police officer pulled over the defendant for a traffic stop. The defendant appeared nervous and had an open beer can. The officer asked for consent to search the car, and the defendant refused. The officer then used a dog to execute a sniff test, and the dog alerted. The officer searched the car and found ingredients for manufacturing methamphetamine. However, the dog had never been trained to detect such ingredients. At a hearing on a motion to suppress, the officer testified that he did not maintain complete records of the dog's field performance and that he only kept records relative to alerts resulting in arrests. He testified that the dog's certification had expired the year before the stop. The trial court denied Harris' motion to suppress, but the Florida Supreme Court ultimately reversed, holding that the government, in order to establish reliability, must present "the dog's training and certification records, an explanation of the meaning of the particular training and certification, field performance records (including any unverified alerts), and evidence concerning the experience and training of the officer handling the dog, as well as any other objective evidence known to the officer about the dog's reliability." The United States Supreme Court reversed, reasoning that "[n]o more for dogs than for human informants is such an inflexible checklist the way to prove reliability, and thus establish probable cause." The question, the court concluded, is whether all facts surrounding the dog's alert would make a reasonably prudent person think that a search would reveal evidence of a crime. Massachusetts cases suggest that police reliance on an alert by a drug dog invokes an analysis similar to that which applies to confidential or anonymous informants because, obviously, dogs cannot be cross-examined as to reliability. As such, the dog's training and history of field performance might be considered in assessing the dog's reliability. Factors like the handling of the dog sniff and the dog's reaction might be considered in assessing the dog's basis of knowledge.