Search and Seizure

Summer music festival season is here, and with it, the annual exercises in drug law enforcement aimed at festival-goers and highway travelers in general. Here are a few tips for avoiding trouble.

In contrast with the US Supreme Court, which held that a drug dog sniff did not constitute a search, the Canadian Supreme Court ruled last week that it does, and that random drug dog searches are unconstitutional.

The Vermont Supreme Court has thrown a marijuana conviction based on a warrantless overflight by a military helicopter, saying the state constitution's privacy provisions protect residents and "the airspace above their homes and property."

The US Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether police need a search warrant to enter a residence after an informant has gone in and made a drug buy. Some federal courts have held that by allowing the informant in, the resident has consented to a police search.

The US Supreme Court Monday agreed to hear a case about whether police may search a vehicle after arresting a driver or occupant.

Even if an officer smells the odor of burning weed coming out of your vehicle, that's not enough for him to arrest or search you -- at least in Saskatchewan. That's what the provincial Court of Appeals ruled recently, and the Crown isn't going to appeal that decision.

A cop who smells marijuana smoke coming from an apartment still needs a search warrant before entering, the conservative US 4th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled.

Leonard French followed New Mexico's medical marijuana law to the letter, but that didn't stop the Pecos Valley Drug Task Force from seizing his plants and grow equipment and giving it to the DEA. Now he's suing.

Because small-time marijuana possession is decriminalized in California, a state appeals court has ruled that even if police see you smoking a joint in your living room, they still can't search your place without a warrant -- unless you let them.

In the latest installment of the Chronicle's occasional series on the day-to-day workings of the drug war, we go to Florida, where a drug interdiction exercise disguised as a traffic enforcement effort, some sheriff's radio shenanigans, a suspicious Bible, and a drug dog left one Key West man wondering what hit him.