Texas v. Le (original by judge newell)
Annotate this CaseIn November 2012, a sergeant from Harris County Sheriff’s Department received a tip from a "concerned citizen" that suspicious activity was taking place in a two-story house at 8603 Jubilee Drive in Houston. Police conducted covert surveillance of the house. A black Toyota SUV was parked outside; police found appellee driving the car after a subsequent traffic stop of the vehicle. Officers observed a strong odor of raw marijuana emanating from the car. At that point, the officer called for a narcotics-detection canine. After the dog alerted to the smell of raw marijuana at the front door of the suspected house, the magistrate issued a search warrant for 8603 Jubilee. Police executed the warrant and seized 358 marijuana plants from inside. Appellee was indicted for felony possession of marijuana in January 2013. After the execution of the search warrant, but before a hearing on the motion to suppress, the United States Supreme Court held in "Florida v. Jardines" that law-enforcement officers’ use of a drug-sniffing dog on the front porch of a home without a search warrant violated the Fourth Amendment. Consequently, the issue before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals was whether the search-warrant affidavit–minus the drug-dog’s alert–clearly established probable cause. The trial judge held that it did not, and the court of appeals agreed. The Court of Criminal Appeals reversed because it found that, when looking at the warrant affidavit as a whole, the independently and lawfully acquired information stated in the affidavit clearly established probable cause.
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