RODRIGUEZ v. UNITED STATES - SCOTUS rules on 4th amendment issue

[Coyotesfan97]

Talked to a K9 guy in my dept. He said this doesnt do anything or apply to anything he or others like him do.

So concurred with my initial assessment.

We talked as a unit and it doesn't change what we do.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Shellback]

Sounds like an unconstitutional fishing expedition.

n 2010, a team of researchers at the University of California, Davis set out to test the reliability of drug- and bomb-sniffing dogs.

The team assembled 18 police dogs and their handlers and gave them a routine task: go through a room and sniff out the drugs and explosives.

But there was a twist. The room was clean. No drugs, no explosives.

In order to pass the test, the handlers and their dogs had to go through the room and detect nothing.

But of 144 runs, that happened only 21 times, for a failure rate of 85 percent.

Although drug-sniffing dogs are supposed to find drugs on their own, the researchers concluded that they were influenced by their handlers, and that's what led to such a high failure rate...

[KeeFus]

E

Yeah, no matter how wooden, waffle-y, and soaked in flop-sweat they were, every officer I ever direct-examined thought he did a great job on the stand and blamed us DA's if we lost the case.

Testifying in court is hard and nerve-wracking. In my area Officers did not receive enough training on how to testify, respond to cross-examination, or generally get enough practice doing so. We had 80+ cases on the docket each week and couldn't woodshed the witnesses enough during lunch break after jury selection to make much of a difference. In cases that depend on officer credibility - weak testimony from the cop usually = reasonable doubt. The DA gets to argue, but if the trier of fact doesn't believe the officer, argument can't fix that.

Officers also didn't like it when we handed out plea deals like candy. Sorry about that. But - 80 cases on the docket every week, 100 more coming down the pike, jail so full that they're giving 3-for-1 time, and we can try two per week, if the judge feels like it. And he didn't, because he also had civil and family dockets and got graded by Austin based on the number of cases he disposed of every year. Guess what - we're just poling shit along trying not to dam up the sewers at that point.

It's easy to blame everyone else for the criminal justice system's mess and believe me we all did. Any particular player in the system sees a pretty small part of it; there's a lot of screaming drama backstage.

Im pretty good in court. That said, this is what was happening in my county. Its better now that the State convicted these assholes. It was this way when I started in 1995...so ive seen the wheels of good ole boy justice, back hallway deals, and scratch my back i'll scratch yours BS over the past 20 years. I wish they had dug deeper in this investigation. It also happened in Raleigh a couple years after this case blew up. It happens in every District court I've testified in this State. Our dockets routinely run a few hundred cases per day. You have 80-100 per week? Wow, you're fortunate.

My AO:http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/7092483/

Wake/Raleigh:http://www.wral.com/former-wake-judg...robe/11371025/

[Coyotesfan97]

I've never even tried any type of dope but the dogs are nowhere near infallible and can and will "alert" on command from a handler.

http://reason.com/blog/2013/02/27/ho...rcotics-detect

I'm surprised he didn't throw in Clever Hans or the old we hook dogs on drugs to train them too find it.
No biases present in that article.

I must have missed the secret cue portion of my training.

My dog has sniffed plenty of cars that Detectives and Officers swore had dope in them and didn't alert. Guess what? They drove off.

You know what? I want my dog to be right and I have zero fucks to give that your snitch swears there is pounds of dope in it. If the dog sniffs and alerts we'll search. If he doesn't oh well.

Gee I'll risk my job and freedom for falsifying a report for narcotic detectives. No thank you!

The dog is trained to smell the odor of the drug not the drug itself. The Supremes even discussed residual odor in the latest K9 case.

We train blank cars. We train with distraction odors to train dogs off them.

The last time I printed out my training records for the County Attorney it was a stack of paper 2-3" high.

Gotta go help serve a warrant.




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[LittleLebowski]

I'm surprised he didn't throw in Clever Hans or the old we hook dogs on drugs to train them too find it.
No biases present in that article.

I must have missed the secret cue portion of my training.

My dog has sniffed plenty of cars that Detectives and Officers swore had dope in them and didn't alert. Guess what? They drove off.

You know what? I want my dog to be right and I have zero fucks to give that your snitch swears there is pounds of dope in it. If the dog sniffs and alerts we'll search. If he doesn't oh well.

Gee I'll risk my job and freedom for falsifying a report for narcotic detectives. No thank you!

The dog is trained to smell the odor of the drug not the drug itself. The Supremes even discussed residual odor in the latest K9 case.

We train blank cars. We train with distraction odors to train dogs off them.

The last time I printed out my training records for the County Attorney it was a stack of paper 2-3" high.

Gotta go help serve a warrant.




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I don't doubt a bit of your words and I'm dead certain 99% of the handlers are absolutely not cueing up anything. Nor did I wish to give insult to the profession; the same profession I wish I was in. However, I was referring to this case that ended up in no drugs found and a settlement along with a thorough investigation of the handler, a handler with a documented history of integrity issues.

[joshs]

You don't need consent to walk your dog around the car for a free air sniff. I can walk around your car so can the dog. A detection dog sniffing the car's exterior is not a search.

Courts have already held you have 12-15 minutes to conduct your checks and write the ticket while waiting for the dog absent reasonable suspicion.

Right, but the problem wasn't time because the officer admitted that the initial justification for the stop had been completed. Once the stop was completed, continuing to hold the suspects = seizure, so at least RAS is needed to hold them without consent for any additional amount of time.

[Coyotesfan97]

Absolutely he shouldn't have asked for consent. He should've done his business until the backup arrived and then ran his dog. If it's going to be over 15 minutes absent RS give the driver his ticket and send him on his way.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Coyotesfan97]

I don't doubt a bit of your words and I'm dead certain 99% of the handlers are absolutely not cueing up anything. Nor did I wish to give insult to the profession; the same profession I wish I was in. However, I was referring to this case that ended up in no drugs found and a settlement along with a thorough investigation of the handler, a handler with a documented history of integrity issues.

None taken. Look some people shouldn't be Officers and some Offficers shouldn't be k9 Handlers, on SWAT teams etc.

I find it interesting that a study used to test police dogs reliability is rigged against the dogs.

In one study published last year in the journal Animal Cognition, researchers rigged some tests designed to fool dogs into falsely alerting

Wow design a test to fool dogs and then report that police dogs are unreliable. Awesome

I had to force myself to read the whole article once I saw Radley Balko wrote it.

[TR675]

E

Im pretty good in court. That said, this is what was happening in my county. Its better now that the State convicted these assholes. It was this way when I started in 1995...so ive seen the wheels of good ole boy justice, back hallway deals, and scratch my back i'll scratch yours BS over the past 20 years. I wish they had dug deeper in this investigation. It also happened in Raleigh a couple years after this case blew up. It happens in every District court I've testified in this State. Our dockets routinely run a few hundred cases per day. You have 80-100 per week? Wow, you're fortunate.

Man, if y'all's dockets run 1-200 cases a day - that is absolutely untenable and I'm not at all surprised that folks rationalized their way into BS workarounds. How many attorneys per court?

I sure didn't feel fortunate. My situation was bearable but not great. We had two docket calls a week per court, Monday and Wednesday, usually 40 cases per docket call. Fridays were arraignments and trying cases in the JP courts. Screening cases in happened whenever we had time. There were supposed to be two attorneys per court, but it usually worked out that we had one, or one "experienced" (>6 months on the job) and one noob, which for all intents and purposes meant one attorney. We could generally plea 15-20 of them per docket call. That left 20 or so to try to "get ready on", which was hard if you were in trial. We could move for continuances if we didn't have a witness or had another good reason, so maybe knock out another 5. That left 15 or so to review, gather evidence on, locate witnesses, and woodshed them if you were lucky; we usually weren't. Probably 20 or more witnesses for each docket call, with one investigator per court to locate and serve them; that usually didn't happen.

We found out which case we were going to trial on at 11 am the day of the docket call after announcing pleas; it was usually the jail case or the oldest one on the docket, but our judge liked to mess with the new prosecutors too to see how flexible they were...so would pick cases at random on a regular basis. Office policy complicated things, meaning: you'd better not lose or you could expect to get grilled by the bosses. In addition to all of that, by the end of my time in that office I had a couple of other hats, including asset forfeitures.

And all of that was a recipe for burnout. We had amazingly high turnover in the misdemeanor courts; in 12 months every misdemeanor attorney had quit or been fired. Corners got cut, because that was what it took to keep the pipes open. I had a better option and took it.

Contrast that to my friends in another county - they generally know what case is going to get tried in advance, they have usually three attorneys per court, one attorney does voir dire and then preps for the next docket, the other two try the case, everyone gets a chance to prepare ahead of time, and things run more smoothly. Not smooth, but more smoothly. People tend to like their jobs better there.

I don't want to sound like a crybaby, lots of other prosecutors' offices have similar or worse situations, but prosecutors, especially misdemeanor prosecutors who are on the low end of the totem pole, work under a lot of time constraints that affect the quality of their work.

It all ultimately comes down to funding. Funding a great PD is pointless if there aren't enough judges to hear the cases, prosecutors to prosecute them, jails to house the inmates, and etc.

[TR675]

Our DAs do about 30-40 cases a day on average, so I totally understand not having time to devote to every single one but what ive seen more often, than not, is just cluelessness. Biggest one is usually rehab of officers credibility and knowledge of relevant case law.

If they're baby lawyers - common in misdemeanor courts - they don't know what they're doing. I was pretty good compared to my peers, and I didn't have clue one. Like rookie cops; it takes time in the saddle to not suck anymore.

I'm not knocking or blaming any cop for being not-so-great on the stand; it's a personality thing sometimes and other times it's a training thing and lord knows y'all have enough to train that is a higher priority.

I will say that I've never blamed an officer (or any witness who didn't out and out lie on the stand) for a loss. That's just gauche. My case, my responsibility.