https://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle-old/395/drugknobs.shtml

The Ionscan 400B is a machine that analyzes microscopic particles picked up by wiping a sterile cloth across a surface. Police in Utah have been using the machine to go to people's homes, wipe their exterior doorknobs, and then, if illicit drugs show up, use the evidence found to obtain a search warrant.

In three federal court rulings, Utah judges have split on the legality of the doorknob drug tests, with two judges ruling against them and one okaying them. The most recent ruling came June 30, when US District Court Judge Dale Kimball threw out the test, saying it violated the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures.

	Any drugs on this doorknob?

In that case, South Salt Lake resident Troy Levi Miller was arrested on methamphetamine charges after a detective swabbed his doorknob and used the results to obtain a search warrant. Police argued that a positive result for controlled substances on a doorknob is evidence that people in contact with drugs touched it and is evidence that drug dealing is going on inside the residence. They did not need a search warrant because the exterior doorknob did not have the same expectation of privacy as the house's interior, they argued.

But Judge Kimball held that an exterior doorknob is part of the private area of a residence and a warrant is required to test it. "A visitor could not turn the doorknob without invading the privacy of the home's occupants -- the only purpose for turning the doorknob is to gain access to the privacy of the home," the judge wrote in a June 30 decision. "A doorknob is not something that is transitory that could be borrowed, taken, or moved to another location... It is a component part of the home."

Late last year, Salt Lake City US District Judge Tena Campbell ruled in the opposite direction, holding that the test reveals nothing about a home's interior, but leaving unanswered the question of how a test that reveals nothing about what is going on inside a house can be the basis for a search warrant of that house. She also compared the Ionscan test to having a drug dog sniff for drugs. The Supreme Court ruled last year that a drug dog search was not a search.

But Campbell is the only one of four judges who have considered Ionscan doorknob cases to uphold them. Judge Kimball was joined in throwing them out by Salt Lake City US District Court Judge Ted Stewart last August. In the only other appeals court case on the subject, from the Virgin Islands in 1999, a judge there threw out the drug screen saying it violated the Fourth Amendment.

But with judges in the same courthouse in the same city coming down with differing opinions, this is an issue that appears headed for the US appeals courts and possibly the Supreme Court.

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