CA5: Pre-Jardines dog sniff at garage was valid at time under case law; GFE applies

The good faith exception applied to validate dog sniffs based on law at the time saying that a sniff at defendant’s garage wasn’t an invasion of the curtilage back then. The search was 2008 and Jardines was 2013. The deterrent purposes of the exclusionary rule do not remotely apply. United States v. Holley, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 13697 (5th Cir. July 27, 2016):

Although the issue is close, we are persuaded that the good faith exception applies. The disputed dog sniffs took place in 2008. At that point in time, this Court had issued only one decision, albeit an unpublished one, that addressed a similar search, United States v. Tarazon-Silva. In Tarazon-Silva, this Court upheld a “dog-sniff of the outer edge of the [defendant’s] garage and the dryer vent on the exterior wall of the house” because it “did not occur on protected curtilage.” This outcome was consistent with several other pre-Jardines decisions addressing dog sniffs of garage doors. Indeed, Holley does not point us to a single pre-Jardines decision that invalidated a search factually similar to those under review. Even if not binding or conclusive, this uniform case law demonstrates that the dog sniffs were “close enough to the line of validity” that an objectively reasonable officer would not have realized that the Gray Wolf Trail and Winterwood Lane warrants were tainted. In these circumstances, “[t]o suppress the evidence derived from th[ese] warrant[s] would not serve the interest of deterring future constitutional violations.” We affirm the denial of the three motions to suppress.