People v. Bramma

In People v. Bramma, 171 Misc. 2d 480 (Dist. Ct., Nassau Co. 1997) the police had obtained a valid search warrant which, inter alia, allowed them to conduct a "canine sniff" of various areas inside and outside of a particular building at a specified address. In the course of executing the search warrant, while the drug detection dog was being taken on a leash from one portion of the building to another the dog alerted upon passing by the defendant. The police then recovered a controlled substance from defendant's person. The court ultimately denied defendant's motion to suppress tangible evidence, concluding that in New York there can be no reasonable expectation that odors emanating from one's person will, under all circumstances, remain private or that an expectation of privacy extends to the atmosphere generally and that one does not have an expectation of privacy to the air outside of one's possessions. (People v. Bramma, supra at 483.)