Fourth Amendment Pros And Cons

The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution prohibits unlawful searches conducted by the government, suggesting that it is the, “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” In the case of Florida v. Jardines, Detective William Pedraja of the Miami-Dade Police Department received an unverified tip that marijuana was being grown the in the home of Jardines. After a mere fifteen-minute surveillance of the home, Detective Douglas Bartlet and his drug-sniffing dog walked up his driveway and onto the porch. The dog discovered the odor of marijuana. Taking what they had gathered at the home, Detective Pedraja applied for a warrant to search the residence and Jardines was

Consisting of two prongs, (1) home, the validation of the place and intention of the search, and (2) expectation of privacy, whether or not the officers trespassed on the property and used the dog illegitimately, allows for the analysis of the Fourth Amendment and the determination of a violation thereof. Using case law from cases such as Katz v. United States, United States v. Jones, and Kyllo v. United States, each prong of this test is carefully analyzed and easily supported. Thus, using the logic in the creation of the majority opinion proves to be the strongest analysis of the case developing a clear and concise answer to whether or not a dog sniffing for drugs outside a home is a search prohibited by the Fourth Amendment of the

The decision in Katz v. United States extended the Fourth Amendment protection to all areas where a person has a reasonable “expectation of privacy.” Although some may argue that the Katz case does not suggest that the is a reasonable expectation of privacy on the porch of the home, in this case, by the virtue of the Fourth Amendment, the government physically intruded Jardines’ constitutionally protected property, the curtilage, to gain evidence. This evidence alone should trump all opposing arguments and suggest and establish that an illegal, unwarranted occurred. Additionally, the use of the dog, without a warrant, physically intrudes on the rights of Jardines. The case Kyllo v. United States the Court held that “surveillance of the home is a search where ‘the Government uses a device that is not in general public use’ to ‘explore details of the homes that would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion.” The dog, Franky, does not enhance the sense of the detectives, like binoculars, rather, it serves as a means to collect information beyond what a human can detect on their own, such as the thermal imager in Kyllo. Not only does the dog serve and an inappropriate tool to gather information without a warrant, but also the