United States v. Buzzy Martinez

In United States v. Buzzy Martinez, —- F.4th —-, No. 23-40366 (5th Cir. May 17, 2024), the Fifth Circuit affirmed the denial of Martinez’s motion to suppress. Martinez had argued that the law enforcement canine’s “alert” was not enough to justify the search of his vehicle.

Main Issue: Is a drug dog’s alert enough to justify extending a traffic stop and searching a vehicle when evidence shows that the dog cannot "reliably differentiate” between innocent smells and those that might indicate a crime? Here, the canine could not “reliably differentiate between the scents of a vehicle’s driver” (which is not evidence of a crime) and “concealed humans within the vehicle” (which could well be evidence of a crime).

Legal Standard (quoted from the opinion): An agent has probable cause to search when, considering the totality of the circumstances, “the facts available to him would warrant a person of reasonable caution in the belief that contraband or evidence of a crime is present.” Florida v. Harris, 568 U.S. 237, 243 (2013) (cleaned up) (quoting Texas v. Brown, 460 U.S. 730, 742 (1983) (plurality opinion)). Probable cause requires only “the kind of ‘fair probability’ on which ‘reasonable and prudent [people,] not legal technicians, act.’” Id. at 244, 249 (alteration in original) (quoting Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 238 (1983)). “[W]e do not evaluate probable cause in hindsight, based on what a search does or does not turn up.” Id. at 249 (citing United States v. Di Re, 332 U.S. 581, 595 (1948)).

The alert of a trained law enforcement canine is presumptively sufficient to provide probable cause to search, but a defendant may challenge the dog’s training or how the dog has performed in the field.

Holding: Here, the canine’s alert was sufficient cause for officers to search the vehicle.

Martinez had argued that “a dog cannot be reliably trained to differentiate between the scents of the driver and other concealed humans in a vehicle,” so the canine’s alerts were insufficient to justify a search. The Fifth Circuit rejected that argument for two reasons.

First, Martinez’s argument “improperly parses the situation in hindsight, rather than examining it through the totality of [the agent’s] experience in the moment.” This canine is “trained and certified to detect both concealed humans and controlled substances,” and even if there is some issue with the human-detecting aspect of the training, the drug training was itself sufficient to provide the agent with probable cause here. The agent could reasonably rely on the canine’s alert.

Second, even the human-detecting training was not clearly unreliable. The district court had found Martinez’s argument speculative, noted that rescue dogs can find people buried under rubble despite the presence of nearby humans searching with them, and explained that this dog could “go weeks without an alert,” suggesting that it was not alerting to drivers. In addition, the court noted that Border Patrol has been training and using canines for nearly 40 years with reliable results. On that basis, the court did not clearly err by finding the canine alert reasonable.