Miami Court rules Animal Control breed ID to be subjective & in violation of due process

This isn't exactly a new story. In fact,I started discussing this all the way back in 2009, but there is some more information I want to pass along as there have been several recent cases against Miami-Dade and the constitutionality of how the enforce their 20 year old pit bull ban.

In March, 2010, Circuit Court in Miami-Dade county ruled in the case of Cardelle v Miami-Dade County Code Enforcement that the manner in which Miami-Dade's Breed Ban was enforced was ruled to violate Constitutional rights of due process. You can read the entire case ruling here -- with a hat tip to Dangeerous Dog Law for posting the actual case.

Now, before I dive into the specifics of the case, I want to be clear. The case does not say that Miami-Dade's ban is in violation of the law -- but it does say that how they are enforcing the law is in violation of due process -- and the case potentially sets a precedent that may make enforcement of BSL even more costly for cities around the country.

The ruling found that there were violations in due process in three different areas :

1) Even though the prosecuting officer, officer Casadevell, offered a fairly solid amount of 'expertise" in animal control, the judge ruled that he could not be considered an 'expert' in 'pit bull' identification. According to previous US Supreme Court rulings, a series of criteria must be available before someone can be considered an 'expert', including testing, peer review, potential error rates and general acceptance in a relevant community. However, because there are no error rates, statistics or objective standards for comparison, the court found that the county applies only "subjective criteria and there is little or no peer review."

It was noted that Casadevall, the officer who declared the dog in question to be a 'pit bull', had 15 years of experience and had ID'd roughly 1,000 dogs -- and that that did make him an expert.  But the court disagreed.

"Officer Casadevall freely admited that he merely performs the inspections and does nothing to gather data, perform quality control and validate existing data. He offered nothing in the way of error checking and peer reviews of his work...there are no procedures in place to verify his findings and validate his previous opinions as to whether he correctly identified pit bulls, the mere quantity of his inspections does not render his opinion reliable." (Emphasis mine)

The court noted that in other field-work type cases that there is a scientific way to determine an officer's level of expertise. In marajuana cases, a lab test can confirm whether or not an officer was right in his assertion that something is marajuana, and in field sobriety checks, science can verify actual sobriety to determine the accuracy of the tests.

Nothing like this exists in the realm of deterimining whether or not a dog is a 'pit bull'.

2) The second area of violation of due process centers around the hearing officer demonstrating bias toward Officer Casadevall's testimony based on the preconceived belief that officers are credible.  I won't talk much about this, but it seems to tie into the above rationale that the officer isn't really an 'expert' in pit bull identification, and thus, his opinion shouldn't be waited above the opinions of others.

3) The third area of due process violation was that the hearing officer apparently made numerous comments that he was inclined to find the dog to be a 'pit bull' based on his fears that the dog would eventually hurt someone. In doing so, the "officer relied on an impermissile factor - fear of future harm." Prior court rulings note that a court cannot rule someone guilty over the fear that they may cause future harm (which is very Minority Report-esque).  This one makes me question whether the whole idea of breed bans - banning something based on the fear of future harm -- isn't in question...but that isn't really addressed in this case.

I think the big win here is that it seems very clear from this ruling (which was ruled 4-1 with one dissenting opinion) is that it sets a precedent that an animal control officer, even an experienced one, cannot be instantly given the title of "pit bull identification expert" without any science, proof or peer review behind it because it then allows for too much subjectivity in the way of determining guilt.  Overcoming this barrier of "the dog is a pit bull because I say it is" will be extremely costly for most cities to overcome in the future.

Would love to get the thoughts of some of the lawyers in the room (who would be more knowledgable than I am about how to interpret and apply this ruling).

And again, h/t to Dangerous Dog Law for the full case report.

Comments

[EmilyS]

this ruling is beyond awesome. I believe the same reasoning about the inexpertise of "experts" has led Denver courts to rule in FAVOR of individuals whose dogs have been identified as "pit bulls" in recent cases. Now we need the reasoning applied in the Dias case which may very well topple Denver's BSL (along with their guaranteed loss in the service dog case).

[Selma]

Excellent news and timely for me. I'll be in court with a dog owner on Monday and we expect them to try to bring in the ACO as an expert. We were already prepared to fight this and win, but this extra bit of juice will help.

Happy New Year (belated) to everybody.

[MichelleD]

To take this one step further, since you can't visually ID a dog and know its true heritage anyway what good does being a visual breed id expert even do? At best this could only apply to seemingly purebred dogs - boxer, bulldog and mastiff mixes look pitty so they're impossible. So any pit bull mix could really be a boxer.

Selma, good to hear from you! Good Luck!

[kmk]

thanks, Brent, for this post on a significant case. It reminds me of a little publicized criminal case out of Massachusetts where the an appelate court overturned a drug dealer's conviction because law enforcement secured a "no knock" warrant by stating the dealer had a "pit bull". The court ruled they had to demonstrate that the particular "pit bull" was dangerous, not just say it was a "pit bull". you have to wonder who identified THAT dog when they got that warrant.

Where was this Miami case 30 years ago? Have the courts just now figured out people aren't psychic after all?

Thanks for the nod to the late, great science fiction writer Philip K Dick. The movie "Minority Report" was based on his short story of the same name. "Blade Runner", "Total Recall", and "Paycheck" were also Dick stories or novels. He was truly a visionary and I read a lot of his his books back in high school (showing my age, here). :-)