Florida v. Harris
| Florida v. Harris | |
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| Argued October 31, 2012 Decided February 19, 2013 |
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| Full case name | State of Florida v. Clayton Harris |
| Docket nos. | 11-817 |
| Citations | 568 U.S. ___ (more)
133 S.Ct. 1050
185 L.Ed.2d 61 (2013) |
| Prior history | motion to suppress evid. denied at trial, affirmed (per curiam), 989 So.2d 1214 (Fla. 1st DCA 2008); reversed, 71 So.3d 756, (Fla. S. Ct. 2011); rehearing denied, unpubl. order, (Fla. S. Ct. 2011); cert. granted, Docket 11-817 (26 March 2012). |
| Holding | |
| If a bona fide organization has certified a dog after testing his reliability in a controlled setting, or if the dog has recently and successfully completed a training program that evaluated his proficiency, a court can presume (subject to any conflicting evidence offered) that the dog's alert provides probable cause to search, using a "totality-of-the-circumstances" approach. | |
| Court membership | |
| Case opinions | |
| Majority | Kagan, joined by unanimous |
| Laws applied | |
| U.S. Const. Amend. IV | |
Florida v. Harris, 568 U.S. ___ (2013), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court addressed the reliability of a dog sniff by a detection dog trained to identify narcotics, under the specific context of whether law enforcement's assertions that the dog is trained or certified is sufficient to establish probable cause for a search of a vehicle under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution.Harris was the first Supreme Court case to challenge the dog's reliability, backed by data that asserts that on average, up to 80% of a dog's alerts are wrong. Twenty-four U.S. States, the federal government, and two U.S. territories filed briefs in support of Florida as amici curiae.
Oral argument in this case – and that of another dog sniff case, Florida v. Jardines – was heard on October 31, 2012. The Court unanimously held that if a bona fide organization has certified a dog after testing his reliability in a controlled setting, or if the dog has recently and successfully completed a training program that evaluated his proficiency, a court can presume (subject to any conflicting evidence offered) that the dog's alert provides probable cause to search, using a "totality-of-the-circumstances" approach.
Prior to this case, the United States Supreme Court has on three occasions dealt with cases involving "dog sniffs" by detection dogs trained to identify narcotics, and has addressed whether or not a dog sniff constituted a "search" under the Fourth Amendment. In those three cases, the Supreme Court has held that:
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