Court Opinion

ID: 9742313
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 21:10:38.83776+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:30.910735
License: Public Domain

ANDERSON, PAUL H.,
Justice (concurring).
I agree with the result reached by the majority, but I write separately to high*184light my underlying concerns and reservations with respect to the extent to which dogs are used as an investigative tool.
As the majority opinion demonstrates, this case is all about the dog sniff and Davis’s expectation of privacy inside his residence. The majority correctly notes that Davis has not demonstrated, and indeed makes no claim, that the dog used outside his apartment would alert to anything other than the odor of illegal narcotics emanating from the inside of his residence. In essence, all we have before us is that the dog used in this search was only capable of disclosing the presence or absence of illegal narcotics based upon odors in the hall that emanated from Davis’s residence. Therefore, I find nothing improper about this search.
But, if faced with evidence that a dog can and will alert to legal activity in a residence based on odors emanating from that residence, I might well reach a different result. See Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27, 40, 121 S.Ct. 2038, 150 L,Ed.2d 94 (2001) (holding that use of thermal-imaging devices to gather information about heat in a home’s interior is not removed from the scope of the Fourth Amendment and does constitute a search). Further, at this point, I am not prepared to adopt, either explicitly or implicitly, the Supreme Court’s conclusion in United States v. Place that a dog sniff is “sui generis” because this investigative procedure is so limited that the only information obtained as a direct result of a dog sniff will be that of illegal activity. 462 U.S. 696, 707, 103 S.Ct. 2637, 77 L.Ed.2d 110 (1983). I will wait to decide this issue until we are presented with a case that includes a more comprehensive record on the reliability of a particular dog sniff.