Today's New York Times reports on a new law enforcement technique that smacks of pure "junk science":
The police told Mr. Bickham they had tied him to a triple homicide through a dog-scent lineup, in which dogs choose a suspect’s smell out of a group. The dogs are exposed to the scent from items found at crime scene, and are then walked by a series of containers with samples swabbed from a suspect and from others not involved in the crime. If the dog finds a can with a matching scent, it signals — stiffening, barking or giving some other alert its handler recognizes.
As it turns out, the dog sniff got the wrong guy, and the accused spent 8 months in jail before someone else confessed. I haven't heard of dog sniff lineups being used in the EDCA (or anywhere in California). But if this practice winds your way into your case, make sure to read the Innocence Project of Texas Dog Sniff Lineup Injustice Report for more ammunition to discredit it.
This reminds me of the way that a drug dog's "alert" to drugs is practically meaningless as "[e]ven the government admits that no one can place much stock in the results of dog sniffs because at least one-third of the currency in the United States is contaminated with cocaine." United States v. $506,231 in U.S. Currency, 125 F.3d 442, 453 (7th Cir. 1997); see also United States v. $30,060 in U.S. Currency, 39 F.3d 1039 (9th Cir. 1994) (drug dog positive alert to the presence of a controlled substance on currency is insufficient to establish probable cause to justify forfeiture of cash).
