Police love drug dogs. Canines can be used to sniff out contraband on your person, in your luggage, or in your vehicle. And the great thing for the cops is that they don't have to worry about your Constitutional Rights with a drug dog. Why? Because the fact that the canine is sniffing around you or your luggage or your vehicle does not amount to a "search" and so the Fourth Amendment is not implicated.
When police stop you in your vehicle for some legitimate purpose, they can have a drug
dog walk around your stopped vehicle as an extra bonus. If the dog "alerts," the officer has probable cause to search your car. But the police cannot make you stay there until their drug dog arrives on the scene. The dog has to do his thing before the cop is done with dealing with whatever traffic violation that caused the stop in the first place.
A Champaign County man was stopped for speeding in Goshen Park. The traffic stop would normally take about fifteen minutes, but the K-9 unit did not get there for almost thirty minutes. The drug dog indicated that there were drugs in the car and heroin was found on the rear floor. The man filed a motion to suppress and lost so he pled "no contest" to the drug charge and appealed.
The Second District Court of Appeals for Champaign County determined there was no justifiable reason to hold the defendant at the scene of the traffic stop past the time it took to write him a ticket for speeding. The defendant was being held at the scene illegally when the drug dog arrived and so the drugs that were found should have been suppressed. Read the decision in State v. Haynes, 2011-Ohio-5020, here.
If you are accused of a crime or have been convicted already, contact me if you can afford to hire a private criminal defense lawyer. Otherwise, contact your county or state public defender to see if they can help.
Contact me 24/7 by sending an email to ohiocriminalappealslawyer@gmail.com