Canada - Top court says random drug searches unlawful breaches of privacy

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Here is the original story http://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/sho...ghlight=sarnia

By The Canadian Press

OTTAWA - Canada's top court says both a random high-school search and one at a Calgary bus terminal were unlawful, calling them breaches of privacy.

The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled 6-3 that neither search was based on a reasonable prior suspicion of a criminal act.

The first case stems from the sudden arrival in 2002 of police and a canine team at St. Patrick's high school in Sarnia, Ont.

Students were confined to classrooms for about two hours while a drug-sniffing dog eventually led officers to a pile of backpacks in an empty gymnasium - one containing bags of marijuana and some magic mushrooms.

"The subject matter of the sniff is not public air space," said the decision in the high-school case. "It is the concealed contents of the backpack.

"As with briefcases, purses and suitcases, backpacks are the repository of much that is personal. . . . Teenagers may have little expectation of privacy from the searching eyes and fingers of their parents, but they expect the contents of their backpacks not to be open to the random and speculative scrutiny of the police. This expectation is a reasonable one that society should support."

The companion case involved a man found with cocaine and heroin after his bags were flagged by a drug-sniffing dog at a Calgary bus terminal in January 2002.

A student identified only as A.M. was charged with possession of marijuana for the purpose of trafficking in the school case, while Gurmakh Kang Brown was charged in the second case.

Police had no search warrant or prior tip that there were drugs in the school. The officers had instead visited on the basis of a long-standing invitation from school officials.

At trial, the drugs were excluded as evidence and the charges dropped.

The Ontario Court of Appeal unanimously upheld the acquittal, describing the case as "a warrantless, random search with the entire student body held in detention."

Said the Supreme Court: "The dog-sniff search was unreasonably undertaken because there was no proper justification."

"While the sniffer-dog search may have been seen by the police as an efficient use of their resources, and by the principal of the school as an efficient way to advance a zero-tolerance policy, these objectives were achieved at the expense of the privacy interest (and constitutional rights) of every student in the school.

In the other case, the Alberta Court of Appeal majority said that Brown was neither unlawfully detained nor illegally searched.

The top court disagreed.

"Any perceived gap in the present state of the law on police investigative powers arising from the use of sniffer dogs is a matter better left for Parliament," said the Brown decision.

It called any court-based solutions that would reduce the standard of scrutiny into state intrusion into privacy "an (inappropriate) exercise of judicial power" in the circumstances.

"When rights and interests as fundamental as personal privacy and autonomy are at stake, the constitutional role of the court suggests that the creation of a new and more intrusive power of search and seizure should be left to Parliament to set up and justify under a proper statutory framework."

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/scoc_school_searches