Luckily, No Dice…

With this brief entry, the Minnesota Litigator slips across the statelines and into a development in South Dakota criminal law…

This past week the South Dakota Supreme Court held that evidence had to be suppressed (evidence, it seems, of some 10 lbs. of marijuana) because the South Dakota police officer released his drug-sniffing dog on an individual’s car at a highway rest area, without the driver’s consent, having detained the driver without reasonable suspicion, and without being incidental to a traffic stop for a traffic violation.

(Presumably, the driver would have been out of luck, if he’d had fuzzy dice hanging off the rear view mirror. (Mules, in general, might consider avoiding these and other risky car bling.))