UPDATES & ANALYSIS

No Fourth Amendment violation in vehicle search after drug-sniffing dog sticks its nose through an open window, Iowa Supreme Court holds

by Rox Laird | December 10, 2024

The Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure was not violated when a drug detection dog inserted its nose into the open window of a suspect’s vehicle, the Iowa Supreme Court held in a divided Dec. 6 decision.

Earlier this year the Court held in State v. Bauler that a drug dog’s placing of its paws on a vehicle did not violate the Fourth Amendment, but there was no majority on the question of whether there is a constitutional violation if and when the dog enters the space inside the vehicle. The Court’s Dec. 6 decision in State v. Mumford resolved that question.

Ashlee Mumford was convicted in Madison County District Court for possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia after the trial court denied her motion to suppress evidence obtained in a search conducted during a traffic stop. Mumford argued the search of her vehicle violated the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the equivalent provision of the Iowa Constitution because the drug detection dog alerted to the presence of controlled substances after it stuck its nose into the vehicle through an open window.

There was no constitutional violation in this case, however, a majority of the Court held in an opinion written by Justice Christopher McDonald and joined by Chief Justice Susan Christensen and Justices Edward Mansfield, Thomas Waterman, and David May. Justices Dana Oxley and Matthew McDermott each wrote separate opinions dissenting from the majority.

The Court’s majority said the Fourth Amendment issue in Mumford’s case was controlled by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2005 decision in Illinois v. Caballes, which held that a dog sniff around the exterior of a vehicle conducted during a lawful traffic stop does not violate the federal Constitution.

The Court further held that the result under the Iowa Constitution was not different. In Mumford’s case, the brief, “almost imperceptible” entry of the drug dog’s snout into the vehicle through an open window “did not go beyond the normal scope of a dog sniff,” McDonald wrote. “The Iowa Constitution does not require the exclusion of evidence obtained as a result of a fleeting entry of a drug dog’s nose into the open cabin of a lawfully stopped vehicle.”

In her dissenting opinion, Justice Oxley, joined by Justice McDermott, said she would hold that Mumford’s Fourth Amendment’s rights were violated and that the district court erred in denying her motion to suppress evidence from the search following the dog’s alert.

Oxley argued that the majority wrongly relied on the U.S. Supreme Court’s Caballes decision. “Caballes did not involve the interior of a vehicle,” Oxley wrote. “Rather, it merely approved of a ‘free air sniff,’ which the Supreme Court has described as ‘an exterior sniff of an automobile [that] does not require entry into the car,’ where the dog ‘simply walks around a car.’”

The fact that the dog’s entry inside Mumford’s vehicle was “almost imperceptible” is of “no moment,” she wrote, quoting from a U.S. Supreme Court decision that said for constitutional purposes a search occurs “whenever the government commits a physical trespass against property, even where de minimis.”

Writing in a separate dissent, Justice McDermott agreed with Oxley’s conclusion that Mumford’s rights were violated under the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, but he wrote separately to say he would hold the search also violated Article I, section 8 of the Iowa Constitution.

The facts in Mumford’s case are “materially identical to Bauler” except in this case, “we now have the police dog not only climbing up and placing its paws on the vehicle, but a step beyond, with the dog also plunging its head through the open window and into the passenger compartment,” McDermott wrote.

“The majority finds all this climbing, pawing, and plunging by police dogs onto and into cars ‘of no constitutional import.’ I doubt many car owners would agree. The sight of a dog propped up on the side of one’s car, literally pawing its panels to gain position as it noses the car’s crevices and crannies, presents an alarming picture. More importantly, it constitutes an illegal trespass.”

Tags: Iowa Supreme Court 2024-25