Court Opinion

ID: 9586159
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:07:51.695587+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:24:26.367858
License: Public Domain

CHAPEL, Judge,
Dissenting:
¶ 1 I dissent. The roadblock here was purely a pretext designed to allow the Durant Police Department to search vehicles for drugs. The evidence showed the drug-sniffing dog sniffed every vehicle it could. These sniffs cannot be justified on safety grounds because there is no legitimate claim that this activity relates in any way to safety. Safety stops are intended to make sure every driver has a current license, tags and insurance, is wearing a seat belt, and is not under the influence or otherwise a danger on the roads. During a safety stop, officers may observe *791whether a driver appears to be under the influence of alcohol or drugs, whether the car smells of drugs, or whether any paraphernalia or drugs are visible. If officers need to use a drug-sniffing dog to find hidden drugs, then those drugs aren’t posing a safety hazard.
¶ 2 Use of a drug-sniffing dog may not, in itself, constitute a “search” under the Fourth Amendment. However, these circumstances are completely unlike those in United States v. Place, and even that ease required officers have reasonable suspicion before subjecting travelers’ luggage to a dog sniff.1 The Court here upholds a gross and unwarranted intrusion into motorists’ privacy, with no reasonable suspicion, because officers went through the motions of a safety cheek while conducting drug searches. We have no way of knowing how many innocent motorists were delayed, inconvenienced and embarrassed when they encountered the drug-sniffing dog. The Court apparently relies on the officers’ lack of reasonable suspicion to justify the search — police just happened to have a drug-sniffing dog there during a routine safety roadblock — but that lack is precisely what makes this stop pretextual. Officers used a legal justification — the safety check — to search vehicles for evidence of unrelated, more serious crimes for which they had no reasonable suspicion.2 This Court should protect innocent citizens from unreasonable war-rantless searches.3
¶ 3 I am authorized to say that Presiding Judge Strubhar joins in this dissent.

. 462 U.S. 696, 103 S.Ct. 2637, 77 L.Ed.2d 110 (1983).

. United States v. Huguenin, 154 F.3d 547, 559 n. 10 (6th Cir.1998); U.S. v. Morales-Zamora, 974 F.2d 149, 152 (10th Cir.1992).

. See Sampson v. State, No. 96-1185 (Sept. 11, 1997, not for publication) (Chapel, J., dissenting); Scott v. State, 927 P.2d 1066 (Okl.Cr.1996) (Chapel, J., dissent).