This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, April 22nd, 2015.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The Supreme Court ruled this week that under many circumstances police may no longer compel motorists

to sit and wait while a police dog is brought to sniff the driver's

car.

That's good news, according to Jim Harper, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, he says it's

by no means a slam dunk for the right of people not to be detained on behalf

of police fishing expeditions, but it's a move in the right direction.

Rodriguez versus United States is a case decided by the Supreme Court where a man was observed driving his car in the bike lane and

then swerving back into the ordinary lanes of traffic.

Pulled over for this reason, he was investigated briefly as people are during such traffic stops,

and issued a ticket.

The law enforcement officer then held him a little bit longer so that a backup could be could arrive and he could run a drug sniffing dog around the car.

The dog signaled the existence of drugs. Drugs were found, and

Rodriguez was convicted. He challenged the search using the dog and the court

found in a 6- three decision that it was indeed an unreasonable seizure to keep him for that extended period after the completion of writing the ticket.

Rodriguez can be thought of as a sort of companion case to a 2005 case called Illinois versus Caballis.

And in Illinois versus Caballis, the same kind of drug sniffing dog run around a car was challenged, but the dog

was used while the ticket was being written.

One officer was walking the dog around the car while the other was doing the ticket.

So there wasn't that extended seizure.

They didn't keep the suspect a little bit longer so that they could do the drug investigation.

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