Lorraine Bailey reports:
The Supreme Court on Wednesday debated whether prolonging a traffic stop to let police conduct a K-9 dog sniff violates the driver’s rights.
Officer Morgan Struble and his K-9 partner Floyd pulled Dennys Rodriguez over on a Nebraska highway just after midnight on March 27, 2012.
[…]
Though Rodriguez claimed that the dog sniff had unreasonably prolonged the stop without reasonable suspicion, in violation of his Fourth Amendment rights, a federal judge in Omaha refused to suppress the evidence, and the 8th Circuit affirmed.
Before the Supreme Court this morning, public defender Shannon O’Connor told the court, “the specific question in this case is whether Officer Struble was entitled to piggyback an already completed traffic offense with probable cause onto an investigation of Mr. Rodriguez involving nothing more than a hunch.”
Read more on Courthouse News, where they’ve uploaded a transcript of oral argument (pdf).