UPDATES & ANALYSIS

In four opinions over 61 pages, Iowa Supreme Court wrestles with meaning of Fourth Amendment

by Rox Laird | July 22, 2024

Does a drug-sniffing dog violate a suspect’s constitutional protection against unreasonable government search and seizure by putting its paws up on the suspect’s car at the urging of its handler?

Five members of the Iowa Supreme Court said that subjecting the suspect’s car to a sniff by a drug-sniffing dog violated neither the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution nor its equivalent in the Iowa Constitution; one justice said the encounter violated the Fourth Amendment but not the Iowa Constitution’s equivalent; and one justice said the encounter violated both the Iowa Constitution and the U.S. Constitution.

A Plymouth County sheriff’s deputy stopped Kyra Rose Bauler on a highway for erratic driving and, based on a license-plate check indicating Bauler’s drug-offense history, summoned a Le Mars police officer to bring his canine to the scene to conduct a drug sniff. The dog alerted, indicating contraband in the vehicle, and Bauler’s car and her purse were searched, yielding evidence of illegal drugs. A later search by jail booking officers found Bauler had 6.89 grams of methamphetamine concealed on her body.

Bauler moved to suppress the evidence produced following the drug sniffing dog’s alert, arguing among other things that the alert was the result of an unconstitutional search because the Le Mars officer and the dog intruded on her vehicle without having a search warrant. The Plymouth County District Court denied the motion and Bauler was convicted of operating while intoxicated, possession of a controlled substance, and introduction of contraband into a correctional facility.

In her appeal to the Iowa Supreme Court, Bauler argued the traffic stop, the canine sniff, and the search of her purse were all illegal. The Court, in its June 28 decision, affirmed the district court, holding that the traffic stop was proper. It did not reach the issue of the purse search, saying Bauler failed to preserve that question at the trial court level.

As for the canine sniff, the Court held that the brief touches of Bauler’s vehicle by the drug-sniffing dog and its handler did not violate Bauler’s rights under the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

An opinion for a plurality of the Court was written by Justice Edward Mansfield joined by Chief Justice Susan Christensen and Justice Thomas Waterman. Justice Christopher McDonald, writing in a separate opinion joined by Justice David May, concurred with the judgment of the Court affirming Bauler’s conviction. Justices Dana Oxley and Matthew McDermott each wrote dissenting opinions.

Justice Mansfield’s discussion of the Fourth Amendment in his plurality opinion cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2005 decision in Illinois v. Caballes, which held that a dog sniff around the exterior of a vehicle during a lawful traffic stop generally does not implicate legitimate privacy interests, and does not violate the Fourth Amendment. “That language, we believe, controls this case and forecloses Bauler’s constitutional challenge,” Mansfield wrote.

The justices’ splintered opinions in this case are in part a product of the Court’s recent history of basing search and seizure decisions on the Iowa Constitution, often reaching results contrary to U.S. Supreme Court precedent, even though the language of the two constitutional provisions is nearly identical.

A recent example is the Iowa Supreme Court’s 2021 decision in State v. Wright, in which the Court in a 4-3 decision held that a Clear Lake police officer’s search of a resident’s trash bin violated the resident’s protection against illegal search and seizure under Article I, Section 8 of the Iowa Constitution. Only three members of the Court – Justices McDonald, Oxley, and McDermott – fully joined the Wright plurality opinion, and the decision continues to animate spirited debate among the justices.

In Wright, the Court held the defendant in that case had not abandoned the garbage searched by police because a city ordinance prohibited anyone from taking or collecting solid waste unless by an authorized waste collector. Thus, the officer trespassed by violating the ordinance, which violated the defendant’s reasonable expectation of privacy based on the ordinance.

“Bauler argues that Wright compels the dog sniff to be invalidated in this case,” wrote Justice Mansfield, who dissented in Wright. “However, unlike in Wright, where a local ordinance prohibited scavenging from garbage cans, there is no statute or ordinance that prohibits touching a car.”

Bauler also urged the Court to apply the Wright theory of trespass, arguing that the canine officer and the dog “physically intruded” on her car and thus violated Article I, section 8. But while the contact by the officer and the dog technically amounted to common law trespass, Justice Mansfield wrote that Wright does not apply to dog sniffs.

“Obviously, a dog is not the same as a human,” he added. “No one cares if a dog examines their cell phone or follows them into the bathroom. So applying common law concepts derived from human interactions in an anthropomorphic manner to dog sniffs makes no sense. When a handler, in the course of an otherwise lawful exterior dog sniff, briefly touches and allows the dog to briefly touch the outside of the vehicle, that innocuous occurrence should be considered a nonevent.”

Justice McDonald filed an opinion concurring in the judgment of the Court, and wrote separately to explain why he rejected Bauler’s argument that the brief touch of her car by the dog and its handler constituted criminal trespass. “In this case, [the dog and its handlers’] momentary touching of Bauler’s vehicle in a public place during a lawful traffic stop was not unlawful, tortious, or otherwise prohibited under Iowa law,” Justice McDonald wrote. “Thus, law enforcement had no obligation to obtain a search warrant prior to conducting the search.”

Justice McDonald’s concurrence was joined in full by Justice May and in part by Justice Oxley.

Justice Oxley filed an opinion dissenting from the Court’s judgment and the analysis of the case in the plurality opinion. While she agreed that law enforcement’s use of a drug-sniffing dog did not violate the Iowa Constitution under the Wright precedent, she cited two recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions handed down after Caballes to argue that the interaction did constitute an unlawful search in violation of the Fourth Amendment. “I would hold that Bauler’s Fourth Amendment rights were violated and would reverse the district court’s denial of her motion to suppress evidence obtained following the dog’s alert,” she wrote.

Justice McDermott joined Justice Oxley’s dissent to the extent that it concluded the dog and its handler’s actions violated the Fourth Amendment, but in a separate dissent addressing Bauler’s challenge under the state constitution, he went further, saying, “I part ways with all my colleagues, and would hold that the search also violated article I, section 8 of the Iowa Constitution.” Justice McDermott would have applied the Supreme Court’s opinion in Wright to find that law enforcement did commit “trespass to chattel” when the police officer guided the dog to enable it to climb onto the size of Bauler’s vehicle to sniff. In so doing, Justice McDermott argued, the sniff constituted a warrantless search that violated Bauler’s reasonable expectation of privacy.

Tags: Iowa Supreme Court 2023-24