Rodriguez v. United States
Rodriguez v. United States, 575 U.S. 348 (2015), was a United States Supreme Court case which analyzed whether police officers may extend the length of a traffic stop to conduct a search with a trained detection dog. In a 6–3 opinion, the Court held that officers may not extend the length of a traffic stop to conduct a dog sniff unrelated to the original purpose of the stop. However, the Court remanded the case to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit to determine whether the officer's extension of the traffic stop was independently justified by reasonable suspicion. Some analysts have suggested that the Court's decision to limit police authority was influenced by ongoing protests in Ferguson, Missouri.
Dennys Rodriguez was arrested on a highway near Waterloo, Nebraska (pictured).
In her majority opinion, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (pictured) held that "a dog sniff is not fairly characterized as part of the officer’s traffic mission".
Florida v. Harris, 568 U.S. 237 (2013), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court addressed the reliability of a dog sniff by a detection dog trained to identify narcotics, under the specific context of whether law enforcement's assertions that the dog is trained or certified is sufficient to establish probable cause for a search of a vehicle under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Harris was the first Supreme Court case to challenge the dog's reliability, backed by data that asserts that on average, up to 80% of a dog's alerts are wrong. Twenty-four U.S. States, the federal government, and two U.S. territories filed briefs in support of Florida as amici curiae.
Police dog