7th Circuit questions the accuracy of Lex the drug-sniffing dog but upholds car search evidence
A federal appeals court has upheld a car search that uncovered cocaine, though it occurred after an alert by a drug-sniffing drug with a poor accuracy record.
The Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said officers in Bloomington, Illinois, had probable cause for the search because Lex the drug-sniffing dog performed well enough to satisfy standards set by the U.S. Supreme Court in its 2013 opinion, Florida v. Harris.
The appeals upheld the drug conviction of the defendant, Larry Bentley, though it said he “put on a good case” in his challenge to Lex’s performance. The Associated Press has a story on the decision, written by Judge Diane Wood.
Evidence gathered by Bentley “suggests that Lex is lucky the Canine Training Institute doesn’t calculate class rank,” Wood wrote. “If it did, Lex would have been at the bottom of his class.”
Lex signals that drugs are present 93 percent of the time when sniffing vehicles, and his overall accuracy rate in the field is about 60 percent, “not much better than a coin flip,” Wood said. Lex is rewarded every time he alerts, which “seems like a terrible way to promote accurate detection on the part of a service animal,” Wood wrote.
Wood noted that the U.S. Supreme Court said in Florida v. Harris that a dog’s satisfactory performance in a certification or testing program may provide sufficient reason to trust his alert, while the dog’s field performance is of “relatively limited import.” She also said Lex’s field accuracy rate of about 60 percent is good enough to support his reliability.
Wood cited other evidence supporting the traffic stop, made after an officer saw Bentley’s car drift onto the side of the road: Bentley couldn’t keep his story straight when talking to the officer, he had nearly $1,700 in his pocket though he admitted to having only a “couple hundred” dollars in his possession, and his spare tire was in the back seat of his car.
Lex’s trainer, Michael Bieser, defended Lex, a 10-year-old Belgian Malinois, in an interview with the Associated Press. He said the opinion is “unfair and very one-sided” and Lex is “a very, very good dog.”
Bieser said Lex’s accuracy rate in the field doesn’t factor in the times he found drug residue or the times drugs were there but police weren’t able to find them. He did say, however, that his training institute is now recommending that dogs should not be rewarded for alerting in the field.
Hat tip to How Appealing.
