Franky's tale began in 2006, when Miami police and federal drug agents, acting on a "crime stoppers" tip, staked out the home of Joelis Jardines. Franky and his handler took point: As other officers guarded the perimeter, they walked onto the front porch of Jardines' house. There Franky, the state of Florida says, "altered by sitting down immediately after sniffing the base of the front door." Franky's alert formed the basis for a search-warrant affidavit, and when officers served the warrant, they found a marijuana grow and arrested Jardines as he tried to run away.

Earlier that same year, Liberty County Sheriff's Canine Deputy William Wheetley stopped a truck driven by Clayton Harris for expired license plates. Aldo, Wheetley's trained dog, also "alerted" by deeply sniffing the door handle of Harris's truck. Wheetley searched and found the ingredients for making mass quantities of meth.

At their trials, both defendants challenged the use of the dogs as a violation of their Fourth Amendment rights to be free of "unreasonable searches and seizures." The Florida Supreme Court reversed both convictions on Fourth Amendment grounds.

At this point, we need to separate the two issues. With Jardines, the Florida court held, the use of a dog to enter his front porch area was itself a "search," meaning that police should have had enough evidence to get a warrant before the sniff. The Supreme Court has held that dog sniffs in public -- for example, of luggage in an airport -- are not "searches" for Fourth Amendment purposes. In part, that's because dogs supposedly only sniff for illegal drugs, and no one has a "privacy interest" in illegal drugs.



But, said the Florida court, the home is different. Officers approaching a residence with a K-9 dog create a spectacle that is neither brief nor unobtrusive, and that compromises genuine privacy interests:

Tactical law enforcement personnel from various government agencies, both state and federal, were on the scene for surveillance and backup purposes. The entire on-the-scene government activity -- i.e., the preparation for the "sniff test," the test itself, and the aftermath, which culminated in the full-blown search of Jardines' home -- lasted for hours. The "sniff test" apparently took place in plain view of the general public. There was no anonymity for the resident. Such a public spectacle unfolding in a residential neighborhood will invariably entail a degree of public opprobrium, humiliation and embarrassment for the resident . . . for such dramatic government activity in the eyes of many -- neighbors, passers-by, and the public at large -- will be viewed as an official accusation of crime.

If the courts approve such tactics, the Florida court warned, police may soon be going door to door with dogs, or applying the home sniff test "in an arbitrary or discriminatory manner, or based on whim and fancy."