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IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF THE STATE OF IDAHO

Docket No. 41220

STATE OF IDAHO,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

JOHN (2013-16) DOE,

Defendant-Respondent.

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2014 Unpublished Opinion No. 482

Filed: April 29, 2014

Stephen W. Kenyon, Clerk

THIS IS AN UNPUBLISHED

OPINION AND SHALL NOT

BE CITED AS AUTHORITY

Appeal from the District Court of the Fourth Judicial District, State of Idaho, Ada

County. Hon. Michael R. McLaughlin, District Judge; Hon. David D. Manweiler, 

Magistrate.

District court’s decision affirming magistrate court’s order suppressing 

evidence, reversed and case remanded.

Hon. Lawrence G. Wasden, Attorney General; Kenneth K. Jorgensen, Deputy 

Attorney General, Boise, for appellant. Kenneth K. Jorgensen argued.

Alan E. Trimming, Ada County Public Defender; Alan D. Malone, Deputy Public 

Defender, Boise, for respondent. Alan D. Malone argued.

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LANSING, Judge

The State appeals from the district court’s memorandum decision and order affirming the 

magistrate’s order suppressing evidence. At issue is whether an alert by a reliable drug dog at 

the driver’s door seam of an automobile provides, under the Fourth Amendment, probable cause 

to search the entire vehicle, including the trunk, under the automobile exception to the warrant 

requirement. We hold that it does, and we reverse. 

I.

BACKGROUND

In August of 2011, the principal of Meridian Academy in Meridian, Idaho asked Officer 

Sunada, a Meridian police officer acting as the school’s resource officer, to arrange for a drug 

dog to sniff the exterior of students’ vehicles in the school parking lot for illegal drugs. Sunada 
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called fellow Meridian police officer Vogt who arrived with his drug canine, Max. Max alerted 

on the lower seam of the driver’s side door on a car belonging to seventeen-year-old defendant 

John Doe. The dog did not alert on the trunk area, however. Sunada physically searched the 

passenger compartment of the vehicle, but no illegal drugs were found. Sunada then searched 

the trunk and found a marijuana pipe.

Doe was charged in juvenile court with possession of drug paraphernalia, Idaho Code 

§ 37-2734A. Doe filed a motion to suppress the paraphernalia evidence and statements he made 

to Sunada. Following a hearing, the magistrate granted Doe’s motion. The magistrate court held 

that while the canine alert at the driver’s door established probable cause to search the passenger 

compartment of the vehicle without a warrant, it did not establish probable cause to search the 

trunk. Accordingly, the magistrate suppressed the drug evidence and further suppressed Doe’s 

statements as fruit of the unlawful search. The State appealed to the district court, which 

affirmed. The State now further appeals.

II.

STANDARDS OF REVIEW

When a decision on a motion to suppress evidence is challenged on appeal, we accept the 

trial court’s findings of fact that are supported by substantial evidence, but we freely review the 

application of constitutional principles to the facts as found. State v. Purdum, 147 Idaho 206, 

207, 207 P.3d 182, 183 (2009); State v. Atkinson, 128 Idaho 559, 561, 916 P.2d 1284, 1286 (Ct.

App. 1996). At a suppression hearing, the power to assess the credibility of witnesses, resolve 

factual conflicts, weigh evidence, and draw factual inferences is vested in the trial court. State v. 

Valdez-Molina, 127 Idaho 102, 106, 897 P.2d 993, 997 (1995); State v. Schevers, 132 Idaho 786, 

789, 979 P.2d 659, 662 (Ct. App. 1999).

When reviewing the decision of a district court sitting in its appellate capacity, our 

standard of review is as expressed by the Idaho Supreme Court:

The Supreme Court reviews the trial court (magistrate) record to determine 

whether there is substantial and competent evidence to support the magistrate’s 

findings of fact and whether the magistrate’s conclusions of law follow from 

those findings. If those findings are so supported and the conclusions follow 

therefrom and if the district court affirmed the magistrate’s decision, we affirm 

the district court’s decision as a matter of procedure.
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Pelayo v. Pelayo, 154 Idaho 855, 858-59, 303 P.3d 214, 217-18 (2013) (quoting Bailey v. Bailey, 

153 Idaho 526, 529, 284 P.3d 970, 973 (2012)). Thus, the appellate courts do not review the 

decision of the magistrate court. Bailey, 153 Idaho at 529, 284 P.3d at 973. Rather, we are 

procedurally bound to affirm or reverse the decisions of the district court. State v. Korn, 148 

Idaho 413, 415 n.1, 224 P.3d 480, 482 n.1 (2009).

III.

ANALYSIS

This case is decided solely under the Fourth Amendment to the United States 

Constitution, as Doe did not assert below any violation of his rights under Article I, § 17, of the 

Idaho Constitution. The Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. 

Warrantless searches, conducted outside the judicial process without prior approval by judge or 

magistrate, are per se unreasonable, subject only to a few well-delineated exceptions. Arizona v. 

Gant, 556 U.S. 332, 338 (2009); Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 357 (1967). One of those,

the “automobile exception,” allows police to search a vehicle without a warrant when there is 

probable cause to believe the vehicle contains contraband or evidence of a crime. Carroll v. 

United States, 267 U.S. 132, 155-56 (1925). The permissible scope of a warrantless automobile 

search “is defined by the object of the search and the places in which there is probable cause to 

believe it will be found.” United States v. Ross, 456 U.S. 798, 824 (1982).

The test for probable cause is not reducible to “precise definition or quantification.” 

Maryland v. Pringle, 540 U.S. 366, 371 (2003). “Finely-tuned standards such as proof beyond a 

reasonable doubt or by a preponderance of the evidence . . . have no place in the [probablecause] decision.” Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 235 (1983). A police officer has probable 

cause to conduct a search when the facts available to him would warrant a person of reasonable 

caution in the belief that contraband or evidence of a crime is present. Texas v. Brown, 460 U.S. 

730, 742 (1983) (plurality opinion). In evaluating whether the State has met this standard, the 

totality of the circumstances is considered. Pringle, 540 U.S. at 371; Gates, 462 U.S. at 232;

Brinegar v. United States, 338 U.S. 160, 176 (1949). 

A. The Standard Applicable to School Searches 

We address initially the State’s assertion that a lesser standard than probable cause is 

sufficient to justify the search because it took place on school grounds. In New Jersey v. T.L.O.,

469 U.S. 325, 340 (1985), the United States Supreme Court concluded that the school setting
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“requires some modification of the level of suspicion of illicit activity needed to justify a 

search.” The Court said that for searches by school officials, “a careful balancing of 

governmental and private interests suggests that the public interest is best served by a Fourth 

Amendment standard of reasonableness that stops short of probable cause.” Id. at 340-41. The 

Court held, “Under ordinary circumstances, a search of a student by a teacher or other school 

official will be ‘justified at its inception’ when there are reasonable grounds for suspecting that 

the search will turn up evidence that the student has violated or is violating either the law or the 

rules of the school.” Id. at 341-42. See also Safford Unified Sch. Dist. No. 1 v. Redding, 557 

U.S. 364, 370 (2009) (citing T.L.O. as adopting “a standard of reasonable suspicion”).

Here, the State notes that the magistrate applied the T.L.O. standard and asserts that the 

search of the vehicle should be analyzed not under the probable cause standard ordinarily applied 

under the automobile exception, but rather under the lesser “reasonable suspicion” standard 

applied to school searches. We need not resolve whether the T.L.O. standard would apply in the 

circumstances presented here because, as explained below, even applying the more stringent 

probable cause standard, the search was lawful.

B. This Court’s Decision in State v. Schmadeka Was Misapplied

An alert by a properly-trained drug dog generally provides probable cause to search a 

vehicle. Florida v. Harris, ___ U.S. ___, 133 S. Ct. 1050, 1057 (2013); State v. Anderson, 154 

Idaho 703, 706, 302 P.3d 328, 331 (2012). The U.S. Supreme Court has held that probable cause 

to believe a vehicle contains evidence of criminal activity “authorizes a search of any area of the 

vehicle in which the evidence might be found.” Gant, 556 U.S. at 347 (citing Ross, 456 U.S. at

820-21). 

Here, probable cause to search was based solely on the drug dog’s alert on the seam of 

the driver’s side door of Doe’s vehicle; there were no other “totality of the circumstances” to 

consider. The magistrate found that while this alert provided probable cause to search the 

passenger compartment, it did not provide probable cause to search the trunk, where the 

contraband at issue was found. The magistrate based this determination upon this Court’s 

decision in State v. Schmadeka, 136 Idaho 595, 38 P.3d 633 (Ct. App. 2001), and the district 

court, also relying on Schmadeka, affirmed the magistrate’s decision.

The search in Schmadeka was not predicated upon a drug dog’s alert. Rather, a police 

officer detected the odor of burning marijuana coming from the passenger compartment of a 
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vehicle during a traffic stop. The officer then searched the entire vehicle. He found no 

marijuana, but in the trunk he found precursors of methamphetamine production. After the 

driver was charged with a drug offense, he filed a suppression motion, contending that probable 

cause to search the trunk was lacking. The trial court denied the motion. The question addressed 

in Schmadeka was the scope of the allowable search under the automobile exception when 

probable cause is based upon an odor of burnt marijuana coming from the passenger 

compartment. We noted that, “The permissible scope of a warrantless automobile search ‘is 

defined by the object of the search and the places in which there is probable cause to believe it 

will be found,’” Id. at 598, 38 P.3d at 636 (quoting Ross, 456 U.S. at 824), and that “[t]he 

existence of probable cause to search the interior of a car is not necessarily sufficient to justify a 

search of the car’s trunk.” Schmadeka, 136 Idaho at 599, 38 P.3d at 637. We joined the courts 

of a number of other jurisdictions which had held that an officer’s detection of an odor of burnt 

marijuana coming from the passenger compartment of a car provided probable cause to search 

the passenger compartment but did not provide probable cause to search the car’s trunk. Id. at 

599-600, 38 P.3d at 637-38. Our decision was predicated upon the commonsense distinction 

between the odor of burnt marijuana in the passenger compartment, which alone is not indicative 

of marijuana in the trunk, and an officer’s detection of the odor of raw marijuana, which may 

justify a search of the entire vehicle:

[The distinction] is premised on the common sense proposition that the 

smell of burnt marijuana is indicative of drug usage, rather than drug trafficking, 

and because it is unreasonable to believe people smoke marijuana in the trunks of 

cars, the mere smell of burnt marijuana does not create the fair probability that the 

trunk contains marijuana.

Id. at 600, 38 P.3d at 638 (quoting United States v. Wald, 216 F.3d 1222, 1226 (10th Cir. 2000)).

The State argues that the lower courts in this case erred by applying to a drug dog alert on 

a vehicle the Schmadeka limitation on the scope of probable cause created by the odor of burnt 

marijuana. We agree. The result in Schmadeka stemmed from the fact that the officer discerned 

that the marijuana he smelled had been burned. The Schmadeka rationale was that marijuana is 

not likely to be smoked in a vehicle trunk, nor is burnt marijuana likely to be transported in a 

vehicle trunk. The same commonsense reasoning does not hold true for a drug-dog alert, which 

communicates no distinction between burnt marijuana and raw marijuana or other drugs to which 

the dog has been trained to alert. According to Officer Vogt’s testimony, Max was trained to 
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alert to the odor of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and marijuana. With respect to 

marijuana, Vogt said that Max will alert on the odor of the drug regardless of whether it is from 

marijuana smoke or raw marijuana and that when Max alerted in this case, Vogt had no idea 

which of the several drugs Max was detecting. In addition, Vogt testified that in his experience 

Max would sometimes alert at a door seam of a vehicle when the drugs were eventually found 

only in the trunk, attributing this to an odor carried by air flow within the structure of the vehicle. 

Thus, unlike the officer’s odor recognition in Schmadeka, Max’s alert on the door seam did not 

logically limit probable cause to the passenger compartment.

Although no prior case has directly addressed this issue, Idaho case law has not imposed 

limits on the area of a vehicle that is searchable based upon a drug-dog alert. Anderson, 154 

Idaho at 706, 302 P.3d at 331 (“A reliable drug dog’s alert on the exterior of a vehicle is 

sufficient, in and of itself, to establish probable cause for a warrantless search of the interior.”); 

State v. Tucker, 132 Idaho 841, 843, 979 P.2d 1199, 1201 (1999) (“This Court previously has 

acknowledged that an officer’s investigation at the scene of a stopped automobile can ripen into 

probable cause as soon as a drug detection dog alerts on the exterior of the vehicle, justifying a 

search of the vehicle without the necessity of obtaining a warrant.”); State v. Gallegos, 120 Idaho

894, 898, 821 P.2d 949, 953 (1991) (“In this case, the officer’s reasonable and articulable 

suspicion to stop appellant’s vehicle ripened into probable cause as soon as the drug-detection 

dog alerted on the rear exterior of the vehicle. Once the officers had probable cause, it was 

proper for them to search the automobile without a warrant.”); State v. Buck, 155 Idaho 828, 829, 

317 P.3d 725, 726 (Ct. App. 2014) (“When a reliable drug dog indicates that a lawfully stopped 

automobile contains the odor of a controlled substance, the officer has probable cause to believe 

that there are drugs in the automobile and may search it without a warrant.”); State v. Gibson, 

141 Idaho 277, 281, 108 P.3d 424, 428 (Ct. App. 2005) (“When a reliable drug-detection dog 

indicates that a lawfully stopped automobile contains the odor of controlled substances, the 

officer has probable cause to believe that there are drugs in the automobile and may search it 

without a warrant.”). As Doe has cited us to no authority from any jurisdiction holding that a 

drug dog’s alert provides probable cause to search only the localized area of the car where the 

dog indicated, we decline to impose such a limitation in this case.
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C. Possibility That Drug Dog Alerted to a Residual Odor

Doe argues that the district court’s suppression decision should be upheld on an 

alternative basis that he raised before the trial court but which that court did not reach in its 

disposition. He asserts that Max’s alert did not create probable cause to believe drugs were 

present in the car because evidence at the suppression hearing showed that the dog could not 

distinguish between the odor of drugs that are present and residual odors left by drugs that were 

formerly there, or even transferred odors from hands. According to Vogt’s testimony, if a person 

with marijuana residue on a hand touches a door handle, the odor of marijuana may be present at 

that location for an unknown period, and Max may alert even though no marijuana was ever in 

the car. Similarly, Vogt said, if a person with illegal drugs in a back pocket sits in the car, the 

odor of the drugs may remain on the seat. Consequently, Doe argues, a dog not trained to ignore 

residual odors fails to provide even a “reasonable probability” that drugs are presently contained 

in the vehicle.

There may be some logic in Doe’s contention that a drug dog whose detection skills fail 

to differentiate between the actual presence of illegal drugs and residual odors1 provides sparse 

reason to believe that drugs are currently present. Nevertheless, Doe’s position runs counter to a 

recent decision by the final authority on interpretation of the Fourth Amendment, the United 

States Supreme Court. In Harris, the Court addressed whether extensive records of a drug dog’s 

field performance were required to establish the dog’s reliability. The Court rejected such an

approach as inflexible and stated that evidence of a dog’s satisfactory performance in a bona fide 

certification or training program can provide sufficient reason to trust a dog’s alert and allow a 

court to find that the dog’s alert provides probable cause. Id. at ___, 133 S. Ct. at 1057.2 Along 

the way, the Supreme Court specifically rejected the proposition that the possibility of the dog 

alerting to a residual odor detracts from probable cause. The Court said:

 

1 In State v. Gibson, 141 Idaho 277, 283 n.3, 108 P.3d 424, 430 n.3 (Ct. App. 2005), this 

Court cited Matheson v. State, 870 So. 2d 8, 13-14 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2003), which noted that 

United States Customs Service dogs receive a rigorous twelve-week training course that includes 

instruction in disregarding distractions such as food, harmless drugs, and residual scents. Thus, 

it appears, dogs can be trained not to alert on residual scents, but that this requires more training 

and an amenable dog.

2 The defendant must, of course, have the opportunity to challenge this evidence of a dog’s 

reliability through cross-examination or expert witnesses, such as by asserting that a training 

program or method is inadequate. Harris, ___ U.S. at ___, 133 S. Ct. at 1057. 
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The Florida Supreme Court treated a dog’s response to residual odor as an error, 

referring to the “inability to distinguish between [such] odors and actual drugs” as 

a “facto[r] that call[s] into question Aldo’s reliability.” [Harris v. State, 71 So. 3d

756, 773-774 (Fla. 2011)]; see supra, at 1055. But that statement reflects a 

misunderstanding. A detection dog recognizes an odor, not a drug, and should 

alert whenever the scent is present, even if the substance is gone (just as a police 

officer’s much inferior nose detects the odor of marijuana for some time after a 

joint has been smoked). In the usual case, the mere chance that the substance 

might no longer be at the location does not matter; a well-trained dog’s alert

establishes a fair probability--all that is required for probable cause--that either 

drugs or evidence of a drug crime (like the precursor chemicals in Harris’s truck) 

will be found.

Harris, ___ U.S. at ___ n.2, 133 S. Ct. at 1056 n.2.

Before the Supreme Court’s decision in Harris, this Court had already held that “[a]n 

alert by an otherwise reliable, certified drug detection dog is sufficient to demonstrate probable 

cause to believe contraband is present even if there exists a possibility that the dog has alerted to 

residual odors.” State v. Yeoumans, 144 Idaho 871, 875, 172 P.3d 1146, 1150 (Ct. App. 2007). 

Harris gives final resolution to the issue contrary to Doe’s position in this appeal.

Harris also resolves to Doe’s detriment another argument that he advances. Doe asserts 

that Max’s field performance on the day in question shows that the dog was not reliable because 

it alerted on a number of other vehicles in the school parking lot, and the resulting searches of 

those vehicles yielded no illegal drugs. The Harris Court also rejected this reasoning, stating:

Making matters worse, the decision below treats records of a dog’s field 

performance as the gold standard in evidence, when in most cases they have 

relatively limited import. Errors may abound in such records. If a dog on patrol 

fails to alert to a car containing drugs, the mistake usually will go undetected 

because the officer will not initiate a search. Field data thus may not capture a 

dog’s false negatives. Conversely (and more relevant here), if the dog alerts to a 

car in which the officer finds no narcotics, the dog may not have made a mistake 

at all. The dog may have detected substances that were too well hidden or present 

in quantities too small for the officer to locate. Or the dog may have smelled the 

residual odor of drugs previously in the vehicle or on the driver’s person. Field 

data thus may markedly overstate a dog’s real false positives. By contrast, those 

inaccuracies--in either direction--do not taint records of a dog’s performance in 

standard training and certification settings. There, the designers of an assessment 

know where drugs are hidden and where they are not--and so where a dog should 

alert and where he should not. The better measure of a dog’s reliability thus 

comes away from the field, in controlled testing environments.
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Harris, ___ U.S. at ___-___, 133 S. Ct. at 1056-57 (footnotes omitted). The Court concluded 

that the State’s evidence that the dog was a reliable detector of drugs was not effectively rebutted 

by the fact that the officer’s search did not yield any of the drugs the dog had been trained to 

detect. Id. at ___, 133 S. Ct. at 1058-59.

In light of the Harris decision, neither Max’s capacity to alert on residual odors nor his 

alerting on cars in which no drugs were found precluded a finding that his alert on Doe’s vehicle 

supplied probable cause for a search.

D. The Automobile Exception Applies Even if the Vehicle Is Not Currently “Readily 

Movable”

Lastly, Doe argues, as another alternate basis to uphold suppression, that the automobile 

exception to the warrant requirement should not apply here because his vehicle was unoccupied 

and parked and thus not readily mobile when the search occurred. It is true that the automobile 

exception was, at least originally, founded in part upon the rationale that “the opportunity to 

search is fleeting since a car is readily movable.” Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U.S. 42, 51 (1970). 

However, the Supreme Court has subsequently soundly rebuffed the notion that the exception is 

inapplicable if the element of mobility, and the risk of loss of evidence, is removed in a 

particular circumstance. Both Michigan v. Thomas, 458 U.S. 259 (1982) and Florida v. Meyers, 

466 U.S. 380 (1984) hold that the automobile exception applies even after the automobile has 

been impounded and is in police custody. “[T]he justification to conduct such a warrantless 

search does not vanish once the car has been immobilized.” Thomas, 458 U.S. at 261. Doe’s 

argument on this point has no merit.

IV.

CONCLUSION

For the reasons stated, the district court’s decision on appeal affirming the magistrate’s 

suppression order is reversed, and the case is remanded.

Chief Judge GUTIERREZ and Judge MELANSON CONCUR.