Lower courts have recently divided on the Fourth Amendment implications of a drug detection dog that jumps into a car on its own and then alerts to illegal drugs. I thought I would offer some thoughts on the problem, and why I think that unprompted entry should be deemed a Fourth Amendment search.

First, some context. It's settled law that use of the drug sniffing dog to sniff in the area outside a car is not a search. See Illinois v. Caballes, 543 U.S. 405 (2005) . It's equally clear that a search of a car occurs if the officer directs a drug detection dog to physically enter the car, the dog enters, and then the dog alerts. What courts struggle with is how to treat the dog that jumps into the car unprompted. If the officer wants the dog to stay out of the car, and it's the dog's own ide

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