Court Opinion

ID: 9716601
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 06:45:47.265448+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:47.154407
License: Public Domain

SULLIVAN, Judge,
concurring in result.
I concur with the majority’s affirmance, in Part I, of the trial court’s denial of appellant’s Motion to Suppress. In doing so, however, I must respectfully note that the majority cites to Kenner v. State (1999) Ind.App., 703 N.E.2d 1122, 1125, reh’g denied, for the proposition that “the alert of a trained dog can provide the probable cause necessary to obtain a search warrant.” Op. at 891. To be sure, in the case before us, postal inspector Sadowitz did obtain a search warrant following the Indianapolis Police dog’s alert to the presence of drugs. Similarly, in U.S. v. Place (1983) 462 U.S. 696, 103 S.Ct. 2637, 77 L.Ed.2d 110, the seminal case concerning dog-sniff investigations, the D.E.A. agents utilized the airport dog alert to obtain a search warrant. They did not effect an arrest based upon the dog’s reaction to the luggage.
In Kenner, however, the majority held that, “[t]he dog’s alert to the presence of marijuana provided Officer McDonald with probable cause to search Kenner’s car.” Kenner, supra, 703 N.E.2d at 1127 (emphasis supplied). I would disassociate myself from the breadth of. this holding and would merely restate the following from my separate opinion in State v. Watkins (1987) Ind.App., 515 N.E.2d 1152, 1157 (Sullivan, J., dissenting), reh’g denied: “In any event, I find no authority which would authorize an arrest based upon the targeting of certain luggage [or package] by a trained narcotics dog. Such might well justify further investigation or issuance of a search warrant but not an arrest or even a warrantless search.”
I would add a further cautionary note with respect to the seeming reliance for probable cause placed by the majority upon the use of a drug smuggling profile. The use of allegedly objective and verifiable profiles as a predominant tool in the “War 'Against Drugs” is fraught with the danger of misapplication and risks a consequent violation of the right of privacy held by innocent persons. The factors set forth by the majority here as justification for the actions of the postal inspectors are consistent with innocent conduct upon the part'of a sender and an addressee.
This conclusion is reached by analogizing the case to the use of drug courier profiles. Drug profiles list factors consistent with innocent passenger behavior. Use of drug profiles to identify narcotics traffickers has been seriously questioned. As one scholar has observed, “[use of the drug courier profile] permits searches and seizures of travelers whose conduct is facially innocent because they conform to a formula which purports to describe an entire class of criminals.” Morgan Cloud, Search and Seizure by the Numbers: The Drug Profile and Judicial Review of Investigative Formulas, 65 B.U.L.Rev. 843, 920. Another has stated that, “[w]ith the entrenchment of the drug courier profile, agents may randomly stop citizens for arbitrary reasons or for innocent differences in their appearance from fellow passengers. Agents may then detain citizens until the agents gather enough evidence to ‘call out the dogs’ or conduct a search themselves.” Charles L. Beeton, The Drug Courier Profile: “All Seems Infected to th’ Infected Spy, As All Looks Yellow to the Jaundic’d Eye,” 65 N.C. L.Rev. 417, 470-71. See Andrew Jay Flame, CRIMINAL PROCEDURE — Drug Courier Profiles and Terry-Type Seizures, 65 Temp. L.Rev. 323, 335 (1992) (observing that, “[a]ll airline travelers meet several drug courier characteristics just by entering the terminal, boarding the plane, and deplaning”).
Packages sent through the mail may contain contraband. This however does not justify the seizure of all private packages merely because such packages may be argued to fall within an overly broad range of profile characteristics. As noted by Becton, supra at 471:
“[The role of drug profiles] is not to establish in court that agents had a reasonable suspicion before the stop. Rather it *895should serve as a tool for DEA agents to use in identifying suspects, following or investigating further, and stopping suspects once reasonable suspicion actually exists.... [There should be] a showing in each ease that the agent had reasonable suspicion to stop and detain a person from observations judged on their own merit, rather than as a part of a larger composite and all encompassing profile.”
Although detention of a package and use of dogs to sniff is not so intrusive as. is the detention of a traveling citizen, Fourth Amendment privacy implications are similarly involved.
The use of drug courier profiles, whether with regard to individuals suspected of carrying drugs or with regard to packages in the mail “lend[s] an arguably false sense of legitimacy to searches based on no more than an artfully disguised hunch.” Alexandra Coulter, Drug Couriers and the Fourth Amendment: Vanishing Privacy Rights for Commercial Passengers, 43 Vand. L.Rev. 1311, 1326. While I do not endorse the use of drug profiles to establish probable cause, on the whole, nevertheless, I conclude that there was adequate probable cause for the issuance of the search warrant in this case and that the trial court did not err in denying Neu-hoffs Motion to Suppress.
I concur in full as to Parts II and III of the majority opinion.