Kudos to Rachel Hillier Pratt for responding so pleasantly to our post about her article, and for having the integrity to agree to correct her article once informed of inaccuracies.

We’ve got some fascinating discussions going on. David Raynes continues to insist that there’s no point in dismantling the criminal black [...]

I’ve long thought that Illinois v. Caballes was one of the worst of a series of Constitutionally bad 4th Amendment decisions by the Supreme Court.

In a nutshell, the Supremes, led by Justice Stevens, ruled that, even absent any other suspicion, a drug dog alerting on a car was sufficient cause to justify a full search. In other words, the total decision as to whether there was sufficient reason for a search was to be determined by a dog anxious to please his or her law enforcement master.

The case was brought back to mind this week, when I found, via CrimProf Blog, an analysis of Stevens’ Caballes decision, written in 2006, but just recently posted on SSRN. It was written by James B. Johnston of Seton Hall University and published in the Quinnipiac Law Review. The abstract:

When a drug dealer delivers illegal narcotics to the American market place, he frequently uses our nation’s roadways. In an opinion authored by Justice John Paul Stevens and captioned Illinois v. Caballes, the U.S. Supreme Court held that a drug dealer does not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in delivering illegal drugs that is detected by a drug sniffing dog from the drug dealer’s car. The article argues that we as a society have a right and an obligation to protect ourselves from drug abuse and drug traffickers. Justice Stevens’ opinion provides a brilliant examination of judiciap [sic] precedent coupled with common sense. Caballes provides a balanced approach by providing law enforcement with a case that allows our police and prosecutors to fairly and effectively bring drug traffickers to justice.

My first thought was this was a simple and badly written review written by a high school student (or at least a beginning law school student throwing it together last minute for a class). That’s partly due to the horrid structure of the abstract. The second sentence is a grammatical disaster zone. Perhaps James should have read how to write an abstract (paying particular attention to #1, 3, and 4).