Pennsylvania supreme court rules smell of cannabis cannot be sole pretext for police search

Originally published at: Pennsylvania supreme court rules smell of cannabis cannot be sole pretext for police search | Boing Boing

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Oh, good. Now I can wear my marijuana-scented cologne.

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If it smells like cologne, leave it alone.

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“I wouldn’t want to assume Justice Dougherty is familiar with it.”

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Jesus, finally. That may be one of the best things to come out of cannabis legalization - removing that bullshit excuse that cops could pull out whenever they wanted to search something but had no actual reason. And no matter how absurd the context, they’d get away with it. They searched the car because a cop “smelled cannabis”… as it drove by at 40mph with the windows rolled up? They smelled cannabis coming from a house… that was unoccupied? It certainly never mattered that no cannabis would be found.

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Does that include the dogs too?

a factor in examining the totality of the circumstances."

What does that all really mean?

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The pretext could be used to search any public city bus, taxi, and Uber, and its passengers.

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Let’s be clear:
The cops claimed they ‘smelled it’.
As we all know, they claim whatever TF they want, in order to justify doing whatever TF they want.

I would assume he doesn’t care about it, given the contortions he is making in order to justify the unjustifiable.

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Smell of weed and a darker complexion, probably.

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Johnny Doc was perhaps the most influential person in Philadelphia politics before his conviction last month along with Councilmember Hennon.

Justice Dougherty is a former Philly assistant District Attorney. Pretty sure he’s aware of the standards of evidence.

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“Smell of cannabis”, which in PA just means the wind is from due north, eh?

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Just fucking legalize it, expunge records, and end all this fuckery once and for all!

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i saw a report on the nbc evening news last year interviewing a police dog handler in colorado. he was describing the difficulty and expense of retraining their drug dogs to ignore the smell of cannabis following legalization. he was being very much the whiny baby about it and acted as if those expenses should have been reason enough to eliminate the change in laws.

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Christ, what an asshole. May he quickly reach Enlightenment.

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Picture taken in Cologne.

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I’d been seeing cannabis flavored incense since the 90s, but never tried nor got to smell any of it.

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Can they still say our car smells like meth?

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Funny, I’ve never heard of that being used as a justification. I wonder if it is, or cops can’t easily identify it (or more importantly, judges/jurors aren’t necessarily familiar with it or don’t see it as having a distinctive smell). The near-ubiquity of cannabis and many people being familiar with the smell may have made it a distinctly useful excuse…

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