Court Opinion

ID: 9897661
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-11-14 19:19:49.519066+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:16:24.210127
License: Public Domain

10/31/2023
        IN THE COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS OF TENNESSEE
                         AT NASHVILLE
                               November 8, 2022 Session

         STATE OF TENNESSEE v. ARIANA ELIZABETH MAJOR

               Appeal from the Circuit Court for Montgomery County
                 No. 2019-CR-1374         Jill Bartee Ayers, Judge
                                           Robert T. Bateman, Judge
                     ___________________________________

                           No. M2021-01469-CCA-R3-CD
                       ___________________________________

CAMILLE R. MCMULLEN, P.J., in which TOM GREENHOLTZ, J., joins concurring.

        I concur with the majority opinion’s conclusion based on the narrow issue raised by
the parties and the existing law in Tennessee. I write separately, however, to highlight how
the legalization of hemp has fractured the foundation underlying the rule that a drug
detection dog sniff is not a search subject to Fourth Amendment protections. In my view,
the cases before this court thus far miss the primary issue—whether a drug detection dog
sniff that no longer discloses only contraband is itself a search that must be supported by
probable cause.

       The rule that a drug detection dog sniff is not a search subject to Fourth Amendment
protections rests on the premise that the dog’s alert “discloses only the presence or absence
of narcotics, a contraband item.” United States v. Place, 462 U.S. 696, 707 (1983).
“Official conduct that does not ‘compromise any legitimate interest in privacy’ is not a
search subject to the Fourth Amendment.” Illinois v. Caballes, 543 U.S. 405, 408 (2005)
(quoting United States v. Jacobsen, 466 U.S. 109, 123 (1984)). Any interest in possessing
contraband cannot be deemed legitimate. Id. at 408-09. Therefore, “the use of a well-
trained narcotics-detection dog—one that ‘does not expose noncontraband items that
otherwise would remain hidden from public view,’—during a lawful traffic stop, generally
does not implicate legitimate privacy interests.” Id. at 409 (quoting Place, 462 U.S. at 707)
(emphasis added). Drug detection dogs thus present a unique situation in which an officer
can discover the presence of contraband without first establishing probable cause.

       The legalization of hemp possession means that the premise underlying this rule is
no longer true. Drug detection dogs cannot differentiate between hemp, the possession of
which is now legal, and marijuana, the possession of which remains illegal. A drug
detection dog sniff, therefore, no longer “discloses only the presence or absence of
narcotics, a contraband item.” See Place, 462 U.S. at 707. It discloses the presence or
absence of hemp, a noncontraband item that individuals now have a legitimate privacy
interest in possessing. Whether this legitimate privacy interest transforms a drug detection
dog sniff into a search that must be supported by probable cause remains unanswered.

       This question has been presented in other jurisdictions where hemp, or even
marijuana itself, has been legalized. The answers have varied. See People v. McKnight,
446 P.3d 397, 408-09 (Colo. 2019) (holding that after Colorado’s legalization of marijuana
possession, the sniff is a search that must be supported by probable cause); Joseph v. State,
530 P.3d 1071, 1077-78 (Wyo. 2023) (holding that after Wyoming’s legalization of hemp
possession, the sniff is still not a search); State v. Walters, 881 S.E.2d 730, 756-59 (N.C.
Ct. App. 2022) (avoiding the question because the “[t]he legalization of hemp has no
bearing on the continued illegality of methamphetamine” found in the car, which the dog
was trained to alert to).

        Though this court has begun to hear cases related to a drug detection dog’s inability
to distinguish between marijuana and hemp, the cases have yet to raise this question. State
v. Green, No. M2022-00899-CCA-R3-CD, 2023 WL 3944057, at *2 (Tenn. Crim. App.
June 12, 2023); State v. Bond, No. M2022-00469-CCA-R3-CD, 2023 WL 5559259, at *3
(Tenn. Crim. App. Aug. 29, 2023). Like this case, they challenged only whether the dog’s
alert was sufficient to establish probable cause. Without further development of whether
the sniff itself is a search that must be supported by probable cause, law enforcement is left
in limbo. They must speculate whether their current practices will remain constitutional,
or whether they must formulate a plan to ensure their dogs will no longer alert to hemp.

       Because this important question has not yet been raised in this court, I write
separately to highlight the fracture in the foundation underlying the exemption of drug
detection dog sniffs from Fourth Amendment protections.

                                     ___________________________________________
                                       CAMILLE R. MCMULLEN, PRESIDING JUDGE

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