No, it doesnt. Plain sight and plain smell has been honored as legal for many moons.
Say I pull you over for a broken tailight. I go to your car, and I observe an odor i associate with burnt marijuana. I have Probable Cause to search your vehicle. My ability to detect the smell has nothing to do with the original nature of the traffic stop, yet I have developed probable cause. See how that works? K9s use the exact same "plain smell" doctrine, yet they have a more highly developed sense of smell than humans do. Its the same air Im allowed to smell, Im just using the dog to detect it. There are no rights violations evident.
Drug dogs only have a 60% accuracy rate.
The 60% rule (it is actually 62%, to be exact) is somewhat bogus. This simply means the numbers have been broken down, and that narcotics have been discovered , on average, 62% of the time a drug detection canine has alerted. This doesnt mean the drugs werent there. It simply means they werent found. The drugs could have been disposed of prior to the stop. They could have been in a hidden compartment. They could have been smoked in the car, leaving the odor. They could have been transported, leaving invisible residue. They simply werent found.
Cops develop a sort of a sense. I cannot count the number of times I have searched a car, and not found drugs. Many of these times, I knew, without a doubt, they were there, I just couldnt find them. Might have been in the door panel, under the console, whatever.
The fact is, this ruling changes nothing. This is the way it has been done for a long time, until the Illinois ruling. Most states continued to do it the old way, including Oklahoma. We will continue to do it this way, with no changes foreseeable.
