The Supreme Court of Canada on Friday ruled that random drug searches using police sniffer dogs are unlawful, citing constitutional protections from unreasonable search and seizure.
The 6-3 ruling stems from two separate cases in 2002 that resulted in one conviction and one acquittal.
In one case, a man was arrested at a Calgary bus depot in January 2002 by officers on the lookout for drug couriers after a black Labrador named Chevy sniffed drugs in his luggage.
A subsequent search of the man, who was approached at first because he stared suspiciously at police, found 482g of cocaine in his bag and a small amount of heroine in his pocket.
The trial judge held that “the odors from the bag, which emanated freely in a public transportation facility, did not constitute information in which the accused had a reasonable expectation of privacy.”
But the high court overturned his conviction, saying: “The sniff in this case was an unreasonable search since the RCMP [Royal Canadian Mounted Police] officer did not have grounds for reasonable suspicion at the time the dog was called.”
“Drug trafficking is a serious matter, but so are the constitutional rights of the traveling public,” the court said in its decision.
In the second case, a sniffer dog reacted in November 2002 to an unattended backpack of a student at a Catholic high school in Sarnia, Ontario, with a zero-tolerance policy for drugs.
Police found 10 bags of marijuana and hallucinogenic mushrooms in the bag and charged a 17-year-old student with trafficking, but the trial judge acquitted the boy.
The high court upheld his acquittal, agreeing with the lower court: “Teenagers may have little expectation of privacy from the searching eyes and fingers of their parents, but they expect the contents of their backpacks not to be open to the random and speculative scrutiny of the police.”
Prosecutors in both cases had argued that using sniffer dogs only once there are reasonable grounds to believe contraband is present would make the animals “superfluous and unnecessary.”
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