ME: Assuming dog sniff of a bus was illegal, defendant's consent to sniff of person was attenuated

Maine and federal drug agents conducted what they called an “administrative inspection” of a Greyhound bus driving between NYC and Bangor that stopped in Portland. Assuming that this so called “inspection” of the bus was illegal [it sounds it to me], defendant was nervous in the bus station and that drew attention to him. He consented to a dog sniff of his person that alerted to his crotch and he agreed to a search in the bathroom rather than having them get a search warrant. He consented to the dog sniff and it was attenuated. The alert gave PC. State v. Ntim, 2013 ME 80, 2013 Me. LEXIS 81 (September 17, 2013)*: [*P20] Although the bus inspection and Ntim's consent to the dog sniff were in close temporal proximity, we conclude that Ntim's voluntary consent to the dog sniff was sufficiently attenuated from the bus inspection due to the intervening activities of the law enforcement personnel present in the terminal. Additionally, as the court found, Angel's second alert on Ntim constituted sufficient probable cause for the agents to proceed with the search of Ntim's person in the restroom. See Florida v. Harris, 133 S. Ct. 1050, 1056 n.2, 1057, 185 L. Ed. 2d 61 (2013). Thus, even if the police ran afoul of the Fourth Amendment while conducting the warrantless administrative inspection of the bus, the court did not err in denying Ntim's motion to suppress. This "administrative inspection" excuse to use a drug dog on a Greyhound bus that never crossed the border is ridiculous, and it shows how far the police will go to justify using a police dog when one of them hears of a warrant exception.