Wheels of Justice

Dog Search During a Traffic Stop

The U.S. Supreme Court recently heard arguments on Illinois vs. Caballes to determine whether the Fourth Amend-ment requires reasonable, articulable suspicion to justify using a drug-detection dog to sniff a vehicle during a legitimate traffic stop.

Here are the facts in the Caballes case: Illinois trooper Daniel Gillette stopped Roy Caballes for speeding on a highway. When Gillette radioed the police dispatcher to report the stop, a second trooper, Craig Graham, a member of the Illinois State Police Drug Interdiction Team, overheard the transmission and headed for the scene with his narcotics-detection dog. When they arrived on the scene, Caballes’ car was on the shoulder of the road and Caballes was in Gillette’s cruiser. While Gillette was writing a warning ticket, Graham walked his dog around Caballes’ car. The dog alerted at the trunk. The officers searched the trunk, found marijuana, and arrested Caballes.

Caballes was convicted of a narcotics offense and sentenced to 12 years in prison and a $256,136 fine. The trial judge held that the officers had not unnecessarily prolonged the stop and that the dog alert was sufficiently reliable to provide probable cause to conduct the search.
The Illinois Supreme Court held the initially lawful traffic stop became an unlawful seizure solely as a result of the canine sniff that occurred outside respondent’s stopped car. In its view, the use of the dog converted the citizen-police encounter from a lawful traffic stop into a drug investigation, and because the shift in purpose was not supported by any reasonable suspicion that respondent possessed narcotics, it was unlawful.

According to the U.S. Supreme Court in a previous decision, conducting a dog sniff would not change the character of a lawful traffic stop that otherwise executed in a reasonable manner, unless the dog sniff itself infringed respondent’s constitutionally protected interest in privacy.
On Jan. 24 the U.S. Supreme Court held that a dog sniff conducted during a lawful traffic stop revealing nothing other than the location of a substance no one has a right to possess does not violate the Fourth Amendment.

What does that mean to the average truck driver? Just that law enforcement has the right to have a dog sniff your vehicle whenever you are legally stopped by law enforcement and they can follow up on any alert from the dog.

Jim C. Klepper is president of Interstate Trucker Ltd., an organization providing legal defense protection to commercial drivers. Jim is a lawyer who focuses on transportation law and the trucking industry in particular. He works to answer your legal questions about trucking and has his Commercial Drivers License.