No. 2--99--1288

________________________________________________________________

	IN THE

	APPELLATE COURT OF ILLINOIS

	SECOND DISTRICT

________________________________________________________________

THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE	)	Appeal from the Circuit Court

OF ILLINOIS,	)	of Du Page County.

	)

	Plaintiff-Appellee,	)	No. 97--DT--3462 

                                )                   

v.	)	No. 97--DT--3462

	)

ROBERT S. LIDSTER,	)	Honorable

	)	Mark W. Dwyer,    

	Defendant-Appellant.	)	Judge, Presiding.

________________________________________________________________

	JUSTICE McLAREN delivered the opinion of the court:

	Following a jury trial, defendant, Robert Lidster, was

convicted of driving under the influence of alcohol (625 ILCS 5/11-

-501(a)(2) (West 1998)).  Defendant was arrested after being

stopped at an "informational roadblock" conducted by the Lombard

police department.  He appeals, contending that the trial court

erred in denying his motion to quash his arrest and suppress

evidence because the roadblock was an unreasonable seizure.

	On August 30, 1997, Lombard police set up an "informative

stop" on North Avenue, at the location of a hit-and-run accident a

week before.  The officers intended to stop all eastbound traffic

and pass out flyers about the accident, hoping that someone had

witnessed the incident and could provide information about the

offender or his vehicle.

	While conducting the roadblock, Detective Wayne Vasil was

standing in the center lane of North Avenue.  As each vehicle pulled up, an officer would hand the driver a flyer about the accident.  One such vehicle was defendant's Mazda minivan, which

almost struck Vasil as defendant approached.  At that point, Vasil

was not aware that defendant had violated any state law or city

ordinance, although he had "some sort of feeling that something

might be wrong."  Vasil stated that defendant's van had already

been stopped pursuant to the roadblock before nearly striking him.

	Vasil approached the van to ask defendant why he had almost

hit him.  During the ensuing conversation, Vasil began to suspect

that defendant might be under the influence of alcohol.  As a

result, he directed defendant to pull onto a side street for field

sobriety tests.  Another officer conducted the tests and defendant

was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol.

	Defendant moved to quash his arrest, arguing that the

roadblock was unconstitutional.  The trial court denied the motion. 

Subsequently, a jury found defendant guilty and the court sentenced

him to court supervision.  After the court denied his posttrial

motion, defendant filed a timely notice of appeal.

	On appeal, defendant renews his argument that the roadblock

was unconstitutional.  He contends that, under the balancing test

developed by the state and federal courts, the public interest in

conducting the roadblock--searching for evidence about a prior

crime--did not outweigh the intrusion on the rights of innocent

motorists.

	A fourth amendment seizure occurs when a vehicle is stopped at

a checkpoint.  Michigan Department of State Police v. Sitz, 496 U.S. 444, 450, 110 L. Ed. 2d 412, 420, 110 S. Ct. 2481, 2485 (1990); People v. Fullwiley, 304 Ill. App. 3d 44, 49 (1999).  Whether a particular roadblock or similar device violates the

fourth amendment is a question of reasonableness.  People v. Bartley, 109 Ill. 2d 273, 280 (1985).  The test courts have developed to assess the reasonableness of a procedure involves

balancing the intrusion on an individual's fourth amendment

interests against the program's promotion of legitimate government

interests.  Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648, 654, 59 L. Ed. 2d 660, 667-68, 99 S. Ct. 1391, 1396 (1979).  This in turn requires

the court to weigh the gravity of the public concerns served by the

seizure and the degree to which the seizure advances those 

interests against the severity of the interference with individual

liberty.  Brown v. Texas, 443 U.S. 47, 50-51, 61 L. Ed. 2d 357, 361-62, 99 S. Ct. 2637, 2640 (1979); Bartley, 109 Ill. 2d at 280.

	After the parties filed their briefs, the United States

Supreme Court decided City of Indianapolis v. Edmond, ___531 U.S. ___, 148 L. Ed. 2d 333, 121 S. Ct. 447 (2000).  There, citizens sought

to enjoin the city's use of roadblocks to search for evidence of

drug trafficking.  The court found the roadblock program

unconstitutional because its sole purpose was to uncover evidence

of "ordinary criminal wrongdoing."  Edmond, ___ 531 U.S. at ___, 148 L. Ed. 2d at 343, 121 S. Ct. at 454.  Noting that its roadblock cases

had recognized only a limited exception to the rule that a seizure

must be accompanied by some measure of individualized suspicion,

the Edmond majority observed that the roadblocks the cCourt had previously approved were designed to further a compelling purpose

such as promoting highway safety by targeting drunk drivers (see Sitz, 496 U.S. at 455, 110 L. Ed. 2d at 423, 110 S. Ct. at 2488) or policing the border to stanch the flow of illegal aliens (see

United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U.S. 543, 551-52, 49 L. Ed. 2d 1116, 1124-25, 96 S. Ct. 3074, 3080 (1976)).  Edmond, 531 U.S. at ___, 148 L. Ed. 2d at 341-42, 121 S. Ct. at 4542-53.  However,

the cCourt declined "to suspend the usual requirement of

individualized suspicion where the police seek to employ a

checkpoint primarily for the ordinary enterprise of investigating

crimes."  Edmond, ___531 U.S. at ___, 148 L. Ed. 2d at 345, 121 S. Ct. at 455.

	Although the roadblock in this case is in some ways different

from the one at issue in Edmond, it is impossible to escape the conclusion that the roadblock's ostensible purpose was to seek

evidence of "ordinary criminal wrongdoing."  Vasil testified that

the roadblock was set up in the hope of obtaining more information

about a driver responsible for killing a bicyclist a week earlier. 

The police stopped cars near the site of the accident and at about

the same time of day the accident occurred in the hope that someone

who left work at that time or otherwise traveled that route

regularly might have seen the accident.  The express purpose of the

roadblock was to search for evidence of a crime.

	Edmond did leave open the possibility that an "emergency" might justify a checkpoint the purpose of which would ordinarily be

considered routine crime control.  The cCourt gave as examples

preventing an imminent terrorist attack and catching a dangerous

criminal "who is likely to flee by way of a particular route." 

Edmond, ___531 U.S. at ___, 148 L. Ed. 2d at 345, 121 S. Ct. at 455.  Clearly, no such emergency was present here.  The crime in question

had occurred a week before.  Moreover, the officers did not testify

that they expected even to catch the offender; they merely wanted

to get a more accurate description of him.  This is the type of

routine investigative work that the police must do every day and

does not justify the extraordinary means chosen to further the

investigation.

	One apparent concern of the cCourt in Edmond was that, if "the ordinary enterprise of investigating crimes" (Edmond, ___531 U.S. at ___, 148 L. Ed. 2d at 345, 121 S. Ct. at 455)) could be the basis

for a checkpoint, there would be no theoretical limit on when such

tactics could be employed and the requirement of individualized

suspicion would be nullified.  While the crime under investigation here, involving the death of an innocent person, is undoubtedly

serious, equally serious crimes unfortunately happen every day in

many jurisdictions.  If investigating such a crime could be the

basis for a roadblock, police could stop all cars entering or

leaving town virtually every day on the chance that someone might

have seen something that would aid the investigation.

	Such unbridled use of checkpoints also leaves open the

possibility of police subterfuge, using the pretense of

investigating some infamous crime to stop motorists based on "the

generalized and ever-present possibility that interrogation and

inspection may reveal that any given motorist has committed some

crime."  Edmond, ___531 U.S. at ___, 148 L. Ed. 2d at 345, 121 S. Ct. at 455.  We note that in this case, a second officer was stationed

on a side street, apparently to prevent drivers from evading the roadblock.  This tends to discredit the explanation that the police

were merely seeking information.  Presumably, if a motorist were

willing to provide information to the police, he or she would not

attempt to avoid the roadblock.

	The State argues that the public interest in seeing the hit-

and-run solved was not insubstantial and that the police took

reasonable steps to minimize the intrusion on the motorists'

rights.  However, assuming for the sake of argument that the police

did everything reasonably possible to minimize the intrusion,

Edmond strongly suggests that a criminal investigation can never be the basis for a roadblock, at least absent some emergency

circumstance not present here.  Such an interest is simply not

sufficiently weighty to counterbalance even a minimal intrusion on

the rights of drivers stopped at the checkpoint.

	Finally, although not itself dispositive, some mention should

be made of the third element of the balancing equation, the degree

to which the seizure advances the public interest.  The Supreme

Court has required that the facts on which such an intrusion is

based must "be capable of measurement against 'an objective

standard.' " Prouse, 440 U.S. at 654, 59 L. Ed. 2d at 668, 99 S. Ct. at 1396.  Generally, the choice among reasonable enforcement

alternatives must be left with local governmental officials " 'who

have a unique understanding of, and a responsibility for, limited

public resources.' " People v. Adams, 293 Ill. App. 3d 180, 189 (1997), quoting Sitz, 496 U.S. at 453-54, 110 L. Ed. 2d at 422, 110 S. Ct. at 2487.  However, this does not mean that courts must However, this does not mean that the courts must 

" 'blindly defer to whatever enforcement techniques are chosen by officials' " because courts must analyze these techniques to ensure

that they are, in fact, reasonable in the context of the fourth

amendment.  Adams, 293 Ill. App. 3d at 189-90, quoting Holt v. State, 887 S.W.2d 16, 19 (Tex. Crim. App. 1994).  Here, the State presented no empirical evidence of the effectiveness of such a

checkpoint program.  In the absence of evidence to the contrary, it

seems likely that more traditional law enforcement techniques would

have been just as, if not more, effective than the roadblock

without infringing on the constitutional rights of numerous

motorists, none of whom was suspected of a crime.

	Because the roadblock at which defendant was apprehended did

not comply with constitutional standards, the trial court should

have granted defendant's motion to quash his arrest and suppress

evidence.  Absent this evidence, there remains no evidence to

support his conviction for driving under the influence of alcohol.

	The judgment of the circuit court of Du Page County is

reversed.

	Reversed.

	GEIGER and BOWMAN, JJ., concur.