Opinion ID: 449643
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Probable Cause From the Canine Sniff

Text: 29 Defendant Wheelings claims that the evidence seized at his Bronx apartment should have been suppressed. He argues that the canine sniff, upon which the magistrate relied in part, was an illegal search and that therefore the search warrant was not based on untainted probable cause. We first address the claim that the canine sniff constituted an illegal search. The Fourth Amendment protects people from unreasonable government intrusions into their legitimate expectations of privacy. United States v. Chadwick, 433 U.S. 1, 7, 97 S.Ct. 2476, 2481, 53 L.Ed.2d 538 (1977). Canine sniffs are recognized as being less intrusive than a typical search used to determine the presence of contraband, and the practice of using trained dogs to sniff baggage at airports has been held not to constitute a search. See United States v. Place, 462 U.S. 696, 103 S.Ct. 2637, 2644-45, 77 L.Ed.2d 110 (1983); United States v. Waltzer, 682 F.2d 370, 373 (2d Cir.1982), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 103 S.Ct. 3543, 77 L.Ed.2d 1392 (1983); United States v. Bronstein, 521 F.2d 459, 463 (2d Cir.1975), cert. denied, 424 U.S. 918, 96 S.Ct. 1121, 47 L.Ed.2d 324 (1976). 30 It is one thing to say that a sniff in an airport is not a search, but quite another to say that a sniff can never be a search. The question always to be asked is whether the use of a trained dog intrudes on a legitimate expectation of privacy. See Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967). While one generally has an expectation of privacy in the contents of personal luggage, this expectation is much diminished when the luggage is in the custody of an air carrier at a public airport. 31 We have recognized the heightened privacy interest that an individual has in his dwelling place. For example, in United States v. Taborda, 635 F.2d 131 (2d Cir.1980), we found that police use of a telescope to identify objects or activities unable to be identified without it was a search and that, absent a search warrant, the observations could not form the basis for the issuance of a warrant. Id. at 139-40. We stated that [t]he very fact that a person is in his own home raises a reasonable inference that he intends to have privacy, and if that inference is borne out by his actions, society is prepared to respect his privacy. Id. at 138; see also United States v. Bonfiglio, 713 F.2d 932, 937 (2d Cir.1983) (it was not the enhancement of the senses per se that was held unlawful in Taborda, but the warrantless invasion of the right to privacy in the home). In United States v. Knotts, 460 U.S. 276, 103 S.Ct. 1081, 75 L.Ed.2d 55 (1983), the Supreme Court recently held that police use of an electronic beeper to track the defendants movements was not a search within the contemplation of the Fourth Amendment. Id. at 1087. But the Court specifically found that the police had not used the beeper to track defendant's activities within his home, so that the traditional expectation of privacy within a dwelling place, id. at 1085, was undisturbed. 32 Thus, a practice that is not intrusive in a public airport may be intrusive when employed at a person's home. Although using a dog sniff for narcotics may be discriminating and unoffensive relative to other detection methods, and will disclose only the presence or absence of narcotics, see United States v. Place, 103 S.Ct. at 2644, it remains a way of detecting the contents of a private, enclosed space. With a trained dog police may obtain information about what is inside a dwelling that they could not derive from the use of their own senses. Consequently, the officers' use of a dog is not a mere improvement of their sense of smell, as ordinary eyeglasses improve vision, but is a significant enhancement accomplished by a different, and far superior, sensory instrument. Here the defendant had a legitimate expectation that the contents of his closed apartment would remain private, that they could not be sensed from outside his door. Use of the trained dog impermissibly intruded on that legitimate expectation. The Supreme Court in Place found only that the particular course of investigation that the agents intended to pursue here--exposure of respondent's luggage, which was located in a public place, to a trained canine--did not constitute a 'search' within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. Place, 103 S.Ct. at 2644-45. Because of defendant Wheelings' heightened expectation of privacy inside his dwelling, the canine sniff at his door constituted a search. As the agent had no warrant, the search violated the Fourth Amendment. Hence, we conclude that the information gathered from the dog's alert may not properly be used to support the issuance of the search warrant of Wheelings' apartment.