First Name:
Gerald
Last Name:
Murphy
Major Department:
History
Thesis Director:
Lauren H. Waterworth
Date of Thesis:
Dec 2012
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the legal question presented in Florida v. Jardines, specifically whether or not a dog sniff at the front door of a residence is a search under the 4th Amendment. This paper also applies the lessons gleaned from Jardines to a hypothetical scenario involving a case of suspected terrorism. Whether or not an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy with regards to dog sniffs at the front door of their home depends on three specific questions of law. First, whether the public has a reasonable expectation that drug detection dogs will or will not be used to detect activities inside the home. Second, what does the dog actually smell, the drugs or just some chemical components? Third, whether a highly trained drug detection canine can legally be present on the curtilage of someone's private property without a search warrant. Jardines is the latest case in a long line of 4th Amendment cases that have over the history of this country shaped what our constitutional protections entail. This paper concludes that a warrantless dog sniff at the front door of a suspected grow house is an unreasonable intrusion into an individual's privacy, however, a warrantless dog sniff at the front door of a suspected terrorist bomb-maker's house is probably a reasonable intrusion.