Episode 6 - Paw & Order

When Davenport police begin investigating suspected drug activity at an apartment complex, two K9s—Kurly and Dawn—are called in to put their noses to work.

What follows becomes much more complicated than a narcotics investigation. The dogs' work raises a Fourth Amendment question that makes its way through the federal courts, forcing judges to consider where the protections of a home begin when that home is an apartment.

This week on Dog Days of Murder, we're following two very different police dogs, the investigation that brought their paths together, and a legal fight where even the hallway matters.

Sources

• United States v. Donell Hines, No. 21-2477, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, opinion filed March 10, 2023. 
• U.S. Attorney's Office, Southern District of Iowa — “Davenport Man Sentenced to Federal Prison for Drug Charge,” June 30, 2021. 
• U.S. Attorney's Office, Southern District of Iowa — federal sentencing information concerning Donell Hines's subsequent drug conviction and 2026 sentence. 
• Davenport Police Department — K9 Kurly memorial/retirement information and community responses, Facebook. 
• Davenport Police Department — K9 Dawn retirement announcement and career information, Facebook. 
• City of Davenport, Iowa — community and city background. 
• Florida v. Jardines, 569 U.S. 1 (2013). 
• United States v. Scott, Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals (2010). 
• United States v. Hopkins, Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals (2017). 
• United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897 (1984). 
• Franks v. Delaware, 438 U.S. 154 (1978). 
• National Institutes of Health / National Library of Medicine — research on canine olfaction and the biology of the canine nose. 

Follow along and stay connected:

📸 Instagram: @dog_days_of_murder
📧 Email: dogdaysofmurder@gmail.com
TikTok: @dog.days.of.murde

If you’d like to support the show—or treat Ein to a well-earned pup cup—you can do that here:
 ☕ Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/dogdaysofmurder

www.dogdaysofmurder.com coming soon!

Music by Vibe Depot and Mircea Iancu

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Here, I'm sit over here on the blanket. Won't you chew? Had a girl. Wait, you're already chewing something. Of course it's another bone. Trash cans, people. Sometimes animals find what we wish they wouldn't. And sometimes they find exactly what they're supposed to. This is Dog Days of Murder, where your love of animals meets your fascination with true crime. Hi friends, welcome back to Dog Days of Murder. I'm your host Paula, and this is my pal, sidekick and cleanup crew Ayn. So I have a question. Do you have a ramp for your pets to access the sofa or the bed? I have one for Ayn and she uses it most of the time. But when she's feeling good, she almost dares me to make her use it. And for the record, she has hardware in both of her knees, so she really should use it all the time. I'm not saying my dog is stubborn, but so let me know. Do you use a ramp? Do your pets comply? And moving on really quickly, please take a minute after the episode and leave a rating. It tells me you're listening and helps make the show more visible so others can find it. And follow if you haven't done so already. Okay, let's get to the episode. Today's story is called Paw and Order. I know, I know, it's cheesy, but you'll understand by the end. Dun dun. As always, a quick heads up. This is a true crime podcast featuring real investigations and the animals connected to them. In today's episode, nobody dies except the defendant's decision-making skills. Listener discretion is optional today. It may also include obsessing over a ball, tearing the sofa apart, and finding a bad guy. You have been warned. There's something strange about an apartment door. You can walk down a hallway and pass six of them without giving any of them a second thought. They all open into the same hallway. The same people walk past them every day. Neighbors, visitors, maintenance workers, someone delivering dinner. But behind each door is a completely separate world. You may know the person who lives three doors down well enough to say hello every morning and still have no idea what happens after their door closes. Because that door is the line. Everything on this side of it is shared space. Everything on the other side belongs to them. And most of us assume that whatever we choose to keep behind that door stays there. But a closed door doesn't stop everything. Sometimes something gets out. Davenport is a city of more than 100,000 people sitting along the Mississippi River in eastern Iowa. It's the largest of the Quad Cities, which is a group of communities that straddle Iowa and Illinois on either side of the river. And then there's something unusual about the Mississippi here. While we generally think of it flowing north to south, at Davenport it takes a turn and runs from east to west. The riverfront is a defining part of the city, with parks, walking and biking trails, museums, and a strong arts and music scene. By September of 2019, residents and management at an apartment complex in Davenport had noticed activity that concerned them. The address was 314 Betsy Ross Place, part of the Betsy Ross apartment complex. The building was three stories tall with two apartments on each floor. The complaint centered on apartment two, a first floor unit whose sole tenant was Donnell Jamar Hines. People had reportedly been loitering around the building. There was unusual vehicle traffic. And then there was a report of something considerably more serious. According to the search warrant affidavit, an anonymous source told apartment management that two men had been seen in the rear parking lot robbing someone while armed with firearms. The person who had reportedly been robbed was then seen coming out of apartment two carrying a firearm of his own running after the two men. But there was something unusual about the alleged armed robbery. No one called police. There were no calls for service at the apartment complex connected to the incident. Taken together with the other complaints, however, what residents and management were seeing raised concerns about possible drug activity. Apartment management directed Davenport Police toward apartment two as a possible location for drug distribution. And police already knew the name associated with that door, Donnell Hines. Investigators decided to take a closer look. But they weren't going to knock. They were going to bring someone with them who did not need the door to open. On September 12, 2019, Davenport police officer Brian Schertz arrived at 314 Betsy Ross Place with his canine partner Curly. Curly was a Belgian Malinois who had been imported from the Netherlands and trained at North Iowa Canine. And if you've ever known a Belgian Malinois, you know how much they love to work. Curly certainly had plenty of it. She and Schertz spent nine years together working hundreds of cases for law enforcement agencies on both sides of the Mississippi River. Most of Curly's career was spent in the patrol division, and narcotics detection was part of the work she was trained to do. That was why she was at Betsy Ross' place that day. Schertz brought Curley into the building to conduct a narcotics sniff. Hines lived in apartment two on the first floor. Curly worked the area outside his apartment, and at Hines' door, she positively alerted to the presence of narcotics. That gave Officer Brian Wayland another piece of information to include when he applied for a warrant to search Heinz's apartment. The warrant was granted. Police now had authorization to search apartment two. But before they could execute it, something changed. On September 14, just two days after Curly's alert, Heinz was relocated because of maintenance issues at his apartment. He didn't leave the Betsy Ross complex. He moved to apartment one at 321 Betsy Ross Place. For police, that meant the warrant they'd obtained for his former apartment couldn't simply follow him to the new one. But Curly's work was done. She'd been brought to 314 Betsy Ross Place to search for the odor of narcotics. And at Donnell Hines' door, she had found it. Hines' move didn't take him far. On September 14th, because of maintenance issues at his apartment, he was relocated within the Betsy Ross complex to apartment one at 321 Betsy Ross Place. The new building was different from the one Curley had searched. It was two stories tall with four apartments, and the exterior entrance was locked and inaccessible to the general public. Once through that entrance, the individual apartments opened onto a common interior hallway. Police received permission from apartment management to enter the building, and on september twenty first, Officer Brandon Kefke arrived with another Davenport police canine. Her name was Dawn. Dawn was a medium-sized black dog with floppy ears, a white patch on her chest, and a few white toes. But unlike Curly, who had been imported from the Netherlands specifically for police work, Dawn hadn't started out as a working dog at all. She'd been a family pet in West Virginia. Dawn had a lot of energy. In fact, her family found her so hyper that they eventually surrendered her and she ended up in a pound. She was three days short from being euthanized when her life took a very different turn. Dawn was sent to North Iowa Canine, where all of that energy and drive could be put to work. She was trained in narcotics detection, tracking and article searches before joining the Davenport Police Department's narcotics unit and becoming Kefke's partner. Dawn was also trained as a passive alert canine. So rather than using an active response such as scratching or pawing when she detected a target odor, a passive alert dog is trained to give a quieter indication, which can include sitting, lying down, freezing, or staring. On September 21st, Don's job was to search for the odor of narcotics in the common hallway outside the apartments at 321 Betsy Ross Place. When she searched outside apartment one, the new home of Donnell Hines, Don gave a positive alert at his door. It had been nine days since Curley's narcotics search at 314 Betsy Ross Place, and seven days since the maintenance issues had forced Heinz to relocate. Now police had a positive narcotics alert at his new address as well. Officer Bryant Weyland prepared a second search warrant application. This affidavit included the information from the first investigation, Curley's positive alert at Heinz's former apartment, the fact that Heinz had been relocated, and Dawn's positive alert at apartment one. A judge issued the warrant. Four days after Dawn put her nose to work at Heinz's new apartment, Davenport police were ready to find what was on the other side of that door. On September 25th, 2019, four days after Dawn alerted to the door at Apartment One, Davenport Police returned to 321 Betsy Ross' place to execute the search warrant. Hines answered the door and complied with the officer's instructions. Police handcuffed him and conducted a pat down for weapons before asking a few basic questions, whether there were any children or animals inside the apartment, and whether he was Donnell Hines. Once his identity was confirmed and officers knew there were no children or animals they needed to account for, Officer Bryant Weyland asked Hines if he would be willing to speak with him. Hines agreed, and because several officers were now inside the apartment, Weyland and Detective Robert Myers took him into the bathroom where they could talk privately. There, Hines was read his Miranda rights. While that conversation was taking place, officers began searching the apartment. They found a large amount of cash, a digital scale, and multiple plastic baggies containing suspected drugs. Laboratory testing identified approximately 166 grams of cocaine, 12 grams of cocaine base, commonly known as crack cocaine, and four grams of heroin. The search had confirmed what two narcotics canines had detected from the other side of two different apartment doors. After the search, Heinz was taken to the Davenport Police Department, where questioning continued. Before that interview began, Weyland read Heinz's Miranda rights again. The investigation had started with complaints from people living around Betsy Ross' place. Curley's nose had brought police to one door, and after maintenance issues forced Heinz into another apartment, Don's nose brought them to the next. Now officers had the drugs in their hands. It might have seemed as though the most important part of the investigation was over. Instead, the two dog sniffs were about to become the most complicated part of the case. The evidence against Donell Hines appeared straightforward. Police had searched his apartment and found exactly what Curly and Dawn had indicated was there. But Hines challenged the searches that led them inside. He asked the court to suppress the evidence seized from his apartment. His argument centered on the two canine sniffs. Police had brought Curly and Dawn into the apartment buildings and used them to search for the odor of narcotics outside his doors. Hines argued that by doing so, police had violated his Fourth Amendment rights. And on that point, the court agreed with him. Both dog sniffs were unconstitutional searches. To understand how the court reached that conclusion and why the issue wasn't nearly as straightforward as it might sound, we need to go back to 2010. That year, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals considered a case called United States versus Scott. Police had brought a drug detection dog into the common hallway of an apartment building and conducted a sniff outside an apartment door. The Eighth Circuit held that the dog sniff did not violate the Fourth Amendment. At that point, police officers working within the Eighth Circuit had a federal appellate court decision telling them that using a drug dog outside an apartment door in a common hallway was permissible. Three years after Scott, however, the United States Supreme Court considered a case called Florida versus Hardenus. Miami Day police had received an unverified tip that marijuana was being grown inside a home. Detectives approached the house with a trained drug detection dog named Frankie, who alerted to the presence of narcotics while on the front porch. Police used that alert as part of the probable cause for a search warrant, entered the home, and found the marijuana plants. The porch was considered part of the home's cartilage, the area immediately surrounding and associated with the home that receives constitutional protection along with the home itself. There are ordinary reasons someone might approach your front door. A neighbor can walk up and knock. A delivery driver can leave a package. A Girl Scout can come to sell you cookies. By having a front door, you implicitly allow people to approach it for those kinds of purposes. But that invitation doesn't extend to police bringing a trained detection dog onto your property to investigate what might be inside your home. For someone living in a detached house with the private front porch? Hardenus gave the courts a fairly clear answer. But what about an apartment? Because apparently the Fourth Amendment also has to know whether you share a hallway. Four years after Hardinus in 2017, the Eighth Court confronted that question in United States versus Hopkins. In Hopkins, officers brought a drug detection dog into the interior hallway of an apartment building. The court concluded that the area immediately outside the apartment door was cartilage and therefore protected under the Fourth Amendment. That would seem to settle the question. Except Hopkins did not expressly overrule the Eighth Circuit's 2010 decision in Scott. So there were now two Eighth Circuit decisions to consider, with a Supreme Court ruling sitting between them. Scott had said a dog sniff outside an apartment in a common hallway did not violate the Fourth Amendment. Then Hardenus established that bringing a drug dog onto the protected area of a home to investigate what was inside constituted a search. And Hopkins applied that protection to the area immediately outside an apartment door. By September 2019, when Schertz brought Curly to Heinz's first apartment, and Kepke brought Dawn to the second, the law in the Eighth Circuit had become anything but simple. Was the shared hallway outside an apartment door more like the common area considered in Scott? Or was the space immediately outside the door protected as part of the home under Hardinus and Hopkins? The Federal District Court hearing Heinz's case ultimately determined that both of the canine sniffs violated the Fourth Amendment. Curley had found the odor of narcotics. Dawn had found the odor of narcotics. And the search of Heinz's apartment had found the drugs themselves. But if the dogs had been used in violation of Heinz's constitutional rights, there was now a much bigger question for the court to answer. What happens to everything police found because of them? Normally, when we hear that police obtained evidence through an unconstitutional search, the next part seems obvious. The evidence gets thrown out. But not always. There are exceptions to what is known as the exclusionary rule, which generally prevents the government from using evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment. One of those exceptions comes from a 1984 Supreme Court case called United States versus Leon. The idea behind the Leon good faith exception is fairly straightforward. The exclusionary rule is meant to deter police misconduct, but if officers act in reasonable reliance on a search warrant or on binding law that tells them what they're doing is legal, excluding the evidence doesn't serve that purpose. And that brought the court right back to the complicated history we just talked about. When Curley and Don conducted their sniffs in October 2019, United States versus Scott had not been expressly overruled. The Eighth Circuit had not clearly explained how the Supreme Court's decision in Hardinus applied to an apartment door located inside a common hallway. The District Court had determined that the SNFs themselves violated Heinz's Fourth Amendment rights, but it also found that the officers had acted in reasonable reliance on the law as it existed at the time. In other words, the searches were unconstitutional, but the officers conducting them had reason to believe they were legal. Because of that, the court applied the good faith exception and refused to suppress the evidence found inside Heinz's apartment. Hines challenged more than the dog sniffs. He also asked for what is known as a Franks hearing, named for the Supreme Court case Franks vs. Delaware. Such a hearing can be granted when the defendant makes the required showing that a search warrant affidavit contained a deliberately or recklessly false statement or omitted information in a way that could affect the finding of probable cause. Hines argued that Officer Weyland's warrant affidavit left out important information about the canine sniffs, including details surrounding where and how they had been conducted. The court rejected that argument, finding that his challenges were essentially another attempt to contest the legality of the dog sniffs themselves. Hines also challenged statements he made to police on the day his apartment was searched. Remember those questions officers asked when he first opened the door? Whether there were children or animals inside, and whether he was Donnell Hines? Those questions came before he was read his Miranda rights. But the court found that officers were asking simple questions to confirm Heinz's identity and make sure they could safely enter the apartment. They weren't attempting to elicit incriminating information from him. Before the questioning went any further, Heinz was read his Miranda rights in the bathroom. He was read them again before questioning continued at the police station. His statements could stay too. On February 19, 2021, Heinz admitted that he knowingly possessed the cocaine, cocaine base, and heroin found in his apartment, and that he intended to distribute some or all of those drugs to another person. He also admitted that the cash police recovered was money he had made distributing drugs. On June 28, 2021, United States District Court Judge Stephanie M. Rose sentenced Hines to 57 months in federal prison for possession with intent to distribute cocaine base, cocaine, and heroin. But that wasn't his entire sentence. Hines had been on supervised release for a previous federal offense stemming from a sentence imposed in 2016. Judge Rose ordered the new 57 month sentence to run consecutively with a 24 month sentence for violating that supervised release. Release. Altogether, Hines was sentenced to 81 months in federal prison, followed by three years of supervised release. He was also ordered to pay $100 to the crime victims fund. The district court had ruled. The evidence stayed. The statement stayed. And Hines was headed to federal prison. But he still wasn't finished arguing that Curly and Don never should have been outside those doors in the first place. Hines appealed the District Court's decision to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. His argument presented the appeals court with an unusual situation. Hines wasn't asking the judge to decide whether the two dog sniffs violated his Fourth Amendment rights. The District Court had already decided that they did. Instead, he argued that once the court found the searches unconstitutional, it had been wrong to save the evidence by applying the Leon Good Faith exception. Hines also appealed the denial of his request for a Franks hearing, and the decision allowing the statements he made to police to remain in evidence. On March 10, 2023, a three-judge panel of the Eighth Circuit issued its decision. The judges returned to the unsettled state of the law in September 2019. The question wasn't what Schertz and Kepke personally believed when they conducted the SNFs. The standard was objective. Could a reasonable officer relying on the binding law that existed at the time have believed those searches were legal? The Eighth Circuit said yes. At the time Curley and Don conducted their searches, Scott had not been expressly overruled, and the Eighth Circuit had not clearly explained how Hardinus applied to apartment doors located in common hallways. Court agreed that the officers had acted in reasonable reliance on existing Eighth Circuit precedent. The Leon Goodfaith exception applied, and the evidence recovered under the warrant could be used against Heinz. The court also rejected Heinz's argument that he was entitled to a Frank's hearing. His complaints about information omitted from the warrant affidavit concerning the two canine sniffs amounted, in the court's view, to another attempt to relitigate whether those sniffs were legal. His challenge to the statements he made to police failed as well. The judges agreed that the questions officers asked before giving Hines his Miranda warnings were limited to confirming his identity and ensuring officer safety. Once the questioning moved beyond those basic concerns, Hines had been advised of his rights. The Eighth Circuit affirmed the district court's rulings. There were also two separate concurring opinions. Because apparently three judges agreeing on the outcome doesn't necessarily mean they're done talking about it. Judge Jane Kelly agreed with the result but wrote separately, as did Judge Stephen Gross. The three judges reached the same ultimate decision. Hines' conviction would stand, and the evidence recovered from his apartment would not be suppressed. The legal fight over those apartment doors was over. But the story of Donnell Hines wasn't. Hines was released from federal custody in July 2024. By April 2025, federal authorities said he was distributing drugs again, this time including crack cocaine, fentanyl, and heroin. He was charged with conspiracy to distribute controlled substances and distribution of crack cocaine, and he ultimately pleaded guilty to the distribution charge. On June 29, 2026, Hines appeared once again before the United States District Court judge Stephanie M. Rose, the same judge who had sentenced him in the case involving Curley and Dawn. This time, Judge Rose sentenced Hines to 15 years in federal prison for distributing crack cocaine. She also imposed another two-year sentence for violating the terms of his supervised release to be served consecutively. 17 years in all. According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, this was Heinz's third federal drug conviction and sentencing. But before we leave Davenport, there are two members of this story we need to return to. Because Donnell Hines' case became part of Federal Fourth Amendment law. For Curley and Don, it was one investigation among hundreds. For Curley, the search outside Donnell Hines' apartment was one day in a long career beside Officer Brian Schertz. Curley had come to the United States from the Netherlands and was trained at North Iowa Canine before joining the Davenport Police Department. She spent most of her career in the patrol division, and during nine years with Schertz, the pair assisted with hundreds of cases for law enforcement agencies on both sides of the Mississippi River. When Curly's working years came to an end, she retired to the home of the person who had spent those years beside her. Schertz and his family. Her retirement included playing, taking long walks, and spending time with her family and her four-legged sibling. After years of going to work with Schertz, Curly finally got to simply be his dog. In August of 2023, the Davenport Police Department announced that Curly had died of natural causes at the age of 12. The department wrote that although Curly thoroughly enjoyed coming to work every day, she enjoyed retirement even more. And the community remembered her. The department's Facebook announcement drew 95 comments, with people offering condolences, thanking Curly for her service, and sharing their appreciation for the dog who has spent nine years working in their community. One person wrote, R.I.P. Canine Curly, run free with the angels, prayers for your family. Another wrote, R.I.P. Curly, enjoy patrolling the heavens. Thank you for your service. Dawn's path to police work couldn't have been more different. She hadn't been imported to become a working dog. She began as a family pet in West Virginia, where all that energy would eventually make her valuable in police work was simply too much for her family to manage. Dawn ended up in a pound. And three days short of being euthanized, somebody decided to send her to North Iowa Canine. The dog who had once been considered too hyper to handle was given work to do. According to the Davenport Police Department, Dawn's drive and persistence allowed her to be trained as a police canine. Dawn was trained in narcotics detection, tracking, and article searches before joining the Davenport Police Department's narcotics unit and partnering with Brandon Kepke. She served for seven and a half years. During that time, Dawn participated in hundreds of investigations. The department said her absolute favorite part of the job was spending time in our community, and that she put a smile on the face of everyone she met. Dawn retired on december thirtieth, 2023. And just like Curly, when her working career was finished, Dawn went home with her handler and his family. Two dogs whose lives began very differently, but in September of 2019, both of them were given the same job. And when their working days were over, both Curly and Dawn retired with the handlers who had spent those years beside them. Their working lives were finished. They were home. But I hope you enjoyed it. I know I did, and I learned so much. Curly and Dawn were more than just canines in a case. They helped set case law, and I think that's pretty cool. Well, that's it for this week. As usual, the sources for this case and all the links to all the things are in the show notes. Dog Deeds of Murder is an angry hamster production, written, produced, and hosted by me, Paula Quintana, and my better half, Ayn. Please take care of yourselves and each other, and tell your pets we say hi. We'll see you next Monday for a new story. Until then, Ayn, Grabberle.