Georgia troopers put to the "smell test" in drug case
Is it possible for a police officer to smell raw marijuana when it's wrapped up and locked in a car trunk?
That was the question asked by David West, a Georgia criminal defense lawyer, in a drug case currently pending in Gordon County.
Mr. West's client was arrested and charged with drug crimes after law enforcement officers found 10 pounds of marijuana in the trunk of the car he was driving. The police believed they had probable cause to search the car after catching a "whiff" of raw marijuana coming from the car.
The lawyer filed a motion to suppress the marijuana. Among other things, the lawyer argued that the police officers could not have possibly smelled the marijuana that was wrapped up and stored in the trunk. It's a standard motion in this type of case, and defense lawyers file them all the time.
What's unusual about this case is that the defense lawyer asked the judge to require the officers to do a smell test. The lawyer suggested that the evidence be put into the trunk of a random car in the parking lot. The officers would then be required to determine which car it was in.
Bill Rankin of the Atlanta Journal Constitution covered the story. In the first article reporting the filing of the motion, he quoted both the defense attorney and a medical expert from the University of Pennsylvania's "Smell and Taste Center" who agreed with the lawyer that a person could not smell marijuana when it is wrapped up and stored in a trunk.
Novel idea, but the judge would not go for it. The Atlanta Journal Constitution covered the judge's decision denying the smell test in a follow-up article.
I think most criminal defense lawyers would like to see if the officers could really smell what they say they smell in these traffic stop cases. If the science doesn't support them, the judge should really question whether there is sufficient probable cause to search a car just because an officer says he smelled something incriminating.
But no judge wants to be the first judge to require a police officer to walk around a parking lot sniffing car trunks. It may lead to a lot of dismissed drug cases.
