Robert Guest at  I was the State posts some important stuff on drug dogs.  Dog hits, as alerts by a drug-sniffing dog are called, make for some very interesting evidence at suppression hearings.  The significance is huge:  A dog reacts to something in your car (for example) on the side of a road and suddenly the police are free to rip it to shreds.  No, not just look around the interior, maybe the trunk.  But to pull the headliner out and the dash off, to ravage the trunk looking for “clavos”, secret compartments that can conceal drugs.

If you’ve got something in there, the dog hit gives the cops carte blanche to search for it.  If you don’t, you’re left with a car ripped to pieces on the side of the road with a stern warning by the highway patrol about how they will get you next time, as they drive away.  Try explaining that to the triple A.

But who can argue with a dog?  We’ve been indoctrinated to the belief that dogs have magical powers to smell things with such miraculous precision that it’s above question.  If a K-9 alerts, then it must be true.  Dogs are man’s best friend, right?  They can’t be wrong.  They certainly can’t be evil.  They would never do harm. 

As Guest points out, they are wrong.  A lot.  A certified drug dog need only be correct in his certification testing 50.01 percent of the time.  That leaves 49,99 percent of the time when he’s dead wrong.  It’s just a toss of the coin whether the dog alerts to something real, or nothing, or just reacts to a handler who wants the dog to find something.  After all, the dog gets doggy treats when he alerts.  And you get busted.  The dog definitely has the better end of the deal.

I spent a great deal of time learning about drug dogs during a highway drug case in federal court in Kentucky.  The certification process, the record-keeping, the false-positive alerts, are all critical to the determination of probable cause to invoke the automobile exception to the warrant requirement.  The problem is that while we, the defense lawyers, may educate ourselves as to the rigors and problems with our fine, furry friends, getting a judge to care is another matter.

People like dogs, and want to believe in their miraculous abilities.  Judges are people.  Judges like dogs, etc.  If they started looking too closely at the science behind the miraculous abilities of dogs, it would open a big can of worms that they really don’t want to deal with.  Would you want to be the judge who rules that dog-sniffing is junk science?  They might be cute and friendly, but they are not fool-proof by any stretch of the imagination?  Other than a few militant cat people, everyone would hate you.  Nobody wants to be that hated.

Feeding into this dog-loving junk science culture are lawyers who take for granted that dog sniffs are, indeed, infallible.  While it may be an uphill battle, we cannot sit idly by while our clients lose their constitutional right to be free from unreasonable searches because a dog said so.  While you may never get Fido to admit it on the stand, his handler can be crossed.  Demand the paper work that is required. 

Most lawyers don’t even know that there is paperwork that they are required to maintain in order to keep their certification, or even that they need to be officially certified.  The handler saying so doesn’t cut it.  He’s not the expert, and his representation that Fido is always right should be inadmissible.  Handlers handle, they do not certify.  Do you smell anything self-serving about the handler verifying Fido’s qualifications?

If you want a trusted friend, a warm companion, your own private lassie, get a dog.  If you want a scientifically verifiable method of determining the existence of narcotics in a particular location with a better than 50% likelihood of success, forget the dog.  No matter how warm and cuddly they are, dogs are not infallible.  Humans should not be put to task based upon the testimony of a dog.