Clayton Harris Case

A man is stopped by a police officer and his K-9 after he was seen jaywalking. When the officer and his dog approached the man, the dog immediately reacted to the scent of some sort of illegal substance. Because the dog was alerted by the scent, the officer then had probable cause to search him. As he searched the man, the officer did find illegal substances that the dog smelt. The man was then arrested and charged with possession of illegal substances. The dog’s alertness gave the police officer all of the probable cause he needed to then conduct a search on the man, or on the man’s property; a police drug-detection-dog has a reliable, trained nose that police officers can act on in confidence. Similar to this story, a Florida citizen named Clayton Harris was charged with possession of pseudoephedrine. Precursors for methamphetamine were sniffed out by a drug-detection-dog outside of his truck. Harris was unhappy with how his truck came about being searched, no warning or heads up. He claimed that there was no probable cause to search his vehicle at the time. The explanation Harris gave was that a dog’s nose cannot be relied on to give an accurate reading with no certification. Clayton Harris would …show more content…
While the police officer’s drug-detection-dog, Aldo, was doing a “free air sniff,” he signaled to the driver side door of the vehicle. Since the dog had alerted, this gave the police officer a reason to search Harris’s car. While searching, what Aldo had sniffed out happened to be precursors for methamphetamine. Harris was arrested and taken to jail for the possession of pseudoephedrine (Liu 5). Afterwards, Harris argued that the dog’s alert did not give probable cause to search his vehicle. He also argued that a dog’s nose was not reliable because it did not have any certification. Harris is claiming that his 4th amendment rights were violated and he was wrongfully charged (Liu