Court Opinion

ID: 9735109
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 18:02:08.298654+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:55.303156
License: Public Domain

PAGE, Justice
(concurring specially).
I concur in the result reached by the court, but write separately to voice my disagreement with the court’s holding that the police need only reasonable, articulable suspicion before conducting a dog sniff outside a storage unit. As articulated in my special concurrence in State v. Wiegand, 645 N.W.2d 125, 137-40 (Minn.2002), I believe that probable cause, instead of reasonable, articulable suspicion, is the proper standard for dog sniff cases. In Wiegand, the location of the dog sniff was a motor vehicle. Here, it was the outside of a storage unit within a secure facility. Obviously, the privacy interest is more prominent in this case. As' the court notes, “the privacy interest in an area outside a fixed structure such as a storage unit is greater than that outside a mobile but temporarily stopped automobile.” Given this more prominent privacy interest, a search warrant based on anything less than probable cause impermissibly erodes the protections of Article I, Section 10, of the Minnesota Constitution. State v. Pietraszewski, 285 Minn. 212, 216, 172 N.W.2d 758, 762 (1969) (“A search warrant may be granted only upon a showing of probable cause ‘supported by oath or affirmation.’ ”).