Opinion ID: 1225871
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Whether the district court properly considered the scope of the search of Franklin's car in their motion to suppress.

Text: Franklin next argues that Hall's search of his car went beyond the scope of probable cause because smelling an odor of marijuana smoke would not give a police officer probable cause to search for drugs in the dashboard or other compartments of the car. The factual support for this argument rests in large part on Franklin's claim that the police conducted multiple searches of his car, a claim that the district court heard and decided not to credit. The legal support for this claim is derived from a Tenth Circuit case in which that court held that a police officer would not have probable cause to search the trunk of a car simply because he smelled marijuana smoke in the passenger compartment. United States v. Nielsen, 9 F.3d 1487, 1491 (10th Cir.1993). Franklin's only citation to a case in this circuit is to United States v. Garcia, 897 F.2d 1413, 1419 (7th Cir.1990), a case that held that dismantling door panels could not be justified by consent to search but could be justified by probable cause (and was justified by probable cause, in that case). In this case, the district court credited Hall's testimony that he smelled marijuana smoke in the passenger compartment of Franklin's car and that a drug-sniffing dog alerted to the presence of narcotics from outside the car. As discussed earlier, both would give the police probable cause to search the interior of the passenger compartment for drugs. This circuit has held that the search can go as far as probable cause extends, even into separate containers or the trunk of the car. United States v. Ledford, 218 F.3d 684, 688 (7th Cir.2000) (citing Wyoming v. Houghton, 526 U.S. 295, 300-01, 119 S.Ct. 1297, 143 L.Ed.2d 408 (1999) and United States v. Ross, 456 U.S. 798, 820-21, 102 S.Ct. 2157, 72 L.Ed.2d 572 (1982)). In this case, the odor of marijuana would provide an officer with probable cause to search the passenger compartment and containers within the passenger compartment, and the police dog's alerting to the presence of narcotics would provide additional probable cause to search for narcotics. Accordingly, the search here did not exceed the scope of probable cause, and we affirm the district court's ruling on this part of the suppression issue.