FARGO--The U.S. Supreme Court declined Monday to review a North Dakota case concerning the admissibility of drug evidence sniffed out by a Fargo police dog in an apartment hallway.
Defense attorneys had been seeking the high court's opinion on North Dakota v. Nguyen, a case involving Fargo resident Matthew Nguyen.
In May 2013, Cass County District Court Judge Wickham Corwin ruled that the evidence gathered by Fargo police was inadmissible because officers used the dog to smell for drug odors that allegedly came from under Nguyen's apartment door.
Police obtained a warrant to search the apartment, and Nguyen, then 19, was charged with possession of marijuana with intent to deliver and possession of drug paraphernalia.
Cass County prosecutors asked the North Dakota Supreme Court to overturn Wickham's decision. Prosecutor Gary Euren argued that because an apartment is rented rather than owned, the renter shares the hallway with others and doesn't have the same ownership expectation as a homeowner.
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The state Supreme Court sided with the prosecution, ruling that the use of a drug-sniffing dog in the hallway of a secure apartment building did not violate Nguyen's constitutional rights.
Nguyen then pleaded guilty to all charges, but he reserved the right to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review his case.
Fargo attorney Mark Friese, who represented Nguyen in state court, said the case has reached the end of its legal journey now that the U.S. Supreme Court has decided not to take it.
Friese said he plans to talk to state lawmakers about remedying what he sees as an inequality between the privacy rights of apartment dwellers and those of homeowners when it comes to police dog searches.
"I was optimistic that the (U.S.) Supreme Court would step in and correct this injustice, but we're going to have to defer to our elected leaders to take the lead here," he said.
Each year, the U.S. Supreme Court receives about 10,000 requests to consider cases, and it hears oral arguments in about 75 to 80 cases, according to the court's website.
The last time the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to take a case from the North Dakota Supreme Court was in 1991. In Quill Corp. v. Heitkamp, the nation's highest court reversed a state decision. Quill sold mail-order office supplies, but the case has become a key ruling regarding taxation of the Internet.
