State v. Kono

Summary

Justice Zarella concurred only in the judgment, agreeing that the warrantless dog sniff of the defendant's condominium unit violated the Fourth Amendment but disagreeing with the majority's decision to resolve the issue under the state constitution. He would have applied existing federal constitutional doctrine first and concluded that the dog sniff was a search. He also advocated an interstitial approach requiring courts to address federal constitutional claims before turning to analogous state constitutional claims, unless federal law is unavailable or genuinely unsettled.