Illinois+v.+Caballes

During a routine traffic stop, a drug-detection dog alerted police to drug in Roy Caballes' car trunk. An Illinois court convicted Caballes of drug trafficking. Caballes appealed and argued the search violated his Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. The state appellate court affirmed the conviction. The Illinois Supreme Court reversed and ruled police performed the canine sniff without specific and reasonable facts to support its use, "unjustifiably enlarging the scope of a routine traffic stop into a drug investigation."

Majority Opinion: The Courts opinion states that when the police officer stopped Roy Caballes that it was a lawful stop and would not become unlawful until the stop took more time than needed. The dog then came later and sniffed around the car, it was now considered a drug search. The dog directed itself to the trunk of the car, it then let the officer know that there were narcotics in the trunk. The dog being there was not against the 4th Amendment, it was just around the car, and the dog was a reasonable source, so the cops then searched the car and found the narcotics.

Dissent Opinion: It is said that the use of the dog coming to a normal speeding traffic stop is unauthorized, and that since the dog was brought to the scene the traffic stop became unlawful, because the dog came to the scene it prolonged the traffic stop longer than what it should of took.