Robey v. Superior Court

LIU, J., Concurring.

As today’s opinion explains, there is an important difference between two kinds of smell-related claims. One is that the detection of a distinctive odor through a police officer’s sense of smell may establish probable cause that a closed container holds contraband. This proposition is well established. (See Johnson v. United States (1948) 333 U.S. 10, 13 [92 L.Ed. 436, 68 S.Ct. 367] [smell of contraband may support probable cause where the officer is “qualified to know the odor, and [the odor] is one sufficiently distinctive to identify a forbidden substance”].) The other,…