Sniffer Dog: Abuse or Remedy?
The balance between privacy, human dignity, and inviolability of property and performance of the criminal justice has been discussed since the beginning of the history of the United States. Fourth Amendment to the Constitution guarantees that any searches or seizures made by public officers are only to be performed if the officer has a proper warrant to do it (U.S. Const. amend. IV). However, there are numerous exceptions to the Fourth Amendment, but all of them narrow down to the sufficient probable cause (Worrall, 2015). Sniffer dogs used by police for various purposes can be perceived as such unreliable tool as they lack heuristic and self-critique abilities of the human. However, the necessity of warrant for the seizure and search based on dog’s indication is questioned. The article “Defending the Dog” by Jane Bambauer analyzes the recent requirements for sniffer-dog enabled search warrants and their relation to the privacy rights and probable cause, and her findings justify using dogs for unwarranted search.
The author argues that the sniffer dog-enabled search requires a warrant to be performed but creates an exceptional workaround for search warrant issuing, or serves as a tool to retrieve enough evidence to start the traditional criminal process. Bambauer (2013) appeals to recent court practice which negatively appraises the police practice of searches and arrests without warrants in drug-related cases which is based on the indications given by the sniffer dog. The dog-based evidence is used not only to overcome the Fourth Amendment during the investigation but to perform seizures and searches in exigent or even normal circumstances. Bambauer (2013) also notices that courts are becoming reluctant to accept such proofs and probable cause for privacy violations in drugs related processes as they suggest the continuous abuse of sniffer dog. However, she also states that the Supreme Court held that “the sniff of a dog, directed by a police officer to detect drugs inside a car or home, is not a Fourth Amendment search” (Bambauer, 2013, p. 1203). Hence, the dog is pronounced to be an analog of the warrant in criminal drug procedure.
The author explains the exceptional nature of the sniffer dog as a universal unwarranted search probable cause by the sound legal underpinning. While the author mostly refers to the investigation process needs and law in general which allow dogs to enforce drug-related law enforcement (Bambauer, 2013), there is an excessive support of the sniffer dogs application in common law and the Fourth Amendment by itself. For instance, the unwarranted sniff is legitimate if the evidence is on the plain view or evanescent, there are exigent circumstances or the object of the search is automobile used as a transportation mean (Worrall, 2015). Indeed, the sharp senses of the dog allow getting a plain view on the proof of the crime commitment, say hidden drug load, and the indication of the dog may be perceived as evanescent evidence by itself as it depends on the smell which decays …
