Opinion ID: 2604190
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: application of the balancing test

Text: The propriety of an administrative search is judged under a balancing test in which the invasion of individual liberty is weighed against the necessity for the invasion and its effectiveness in achieving the state's goal. (See Camara v. Municipal Court (1967) 387 U.S. 523, 536-537 [18 L.Ed.2d 930, 940, 87 S.Ct. 1727]; People v. Hyde, supra, 12 Cal.3d 158, 166.) Even assuming that the analogy to administrative searches is proper, and that we should abandon individualized suspicion in favor of a balancing test, I would conclude that roadblocks are neither necessary nor effective enough to warrant the intrusion on the individual that they cause. We all agree that the government has a profound interest in deterring and punishing drunk driving. We have recently lamented the ... horrific risk posed [to public safety] by those who drink and drive. ( Burg v. Municipal Court (1983) 35 Cal.3d 257, 262 [198 Cal. Rptr. 145, 673 P.2d 732].) Yet the necessity for and effectiveness of drunk driving roadblocks remains to be demonstrated. And the intrusion is far from minimal. In the federal cases allowing detentions and other intrusions without individualized reasonable suspicion that wrongdoing was taking place, there was little alternative available to the state, and this entered into the balance in determining whether the stop was reasonable. In those cases, the suspicionless intrusions were literally necessary, since the transgressions to be detected could not be observed unless the inspectors entered the premises; there were no objective indicators visible from the outside upon which an official could form a reasonable suspicion. (See United States v. Biswell, supra, 406 U.S. 311, 316 [32 L.Ed.2d 87, 92]; Colonnade Corp. v. United States, supra, 397 U.S. 72, 74, 76-77 [25 L.Ed.2d 60, 64]; Camara v. Municipal Court, supra, 387 U.S. 523, 537 [18 L.Ed.2d 930, 940]; cf. United States v. Martinez-Fuerte (1976) 428 U.S. 543, 557 [49 L.Ed.2d 1116, 1128, 96 S.Ct. 3074].) By contrast, drunk drivers are conspicuous. We have all observed drunks weaving down the road, speeding up and slowing down, straddling lanes, and ignoring traffic and traffic signs. It is preposterous to claim that police have no way other than a roadblock to detect or deter drunk drivers. The majority suggest that roadblocks are necessary because existing enforcement techniques have not eradicated the problem of drunk driving. If this were a proper consideration, the Fourth Amendment would have little meaning. Existing enforcement techniques have not eradicated the scourge of crime in our society, yet no one would seriously propose that the Constitution therefore permits the police to make unprecedented invasions of personal liberty. If we allow mass detentions through the means of roadblocks merely because the police claim that they may be more effective and helpful to law enforcement, we have gone a long way towards abandoning the protection of the Fourth Amendment. The majority find that the deterrent effect of drunk driving roadblocks weighs heavily in the balance. (The majority concede that roadblocks do not produce nearly as many arrests per officer hour as patrols in which drivers are stopped for cause.) [3] This assertion is based on anecdotal evidence and flawed logic. Some states justify roadblocks by comparing accident rates in counties having roadblocks with others having none, but to conclude that it was the roadblock that caused the difference is the rankest speculation. [4] The California Highway Patrol concedes that such evidence is inconclusive. In fact, some studies indicate that whatever deterrent effect a roadblock may have is entirely the result of its novelty and the waywardness of publicity. For example, as European drivers became accustomed to roadblocks and the publicity about them died down, their deterrent effect disappeared. (See ABA, Assessment of Effectiveness, supra, at p. 3.) The majority admit that the deterrent effect of drunk driving roadblocks is not established and that [t]he experience both in California and in other states with sobriety checkpoints has been very limited, and no definitive statistics are yet available. (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 1339.) Yet, the majority insist that [i]t would be presumptuous in the extreme for this court to prohibit the use of an otherwise permissible and potentially effective procedure merely because its effectiveness is at the present time largely untested. ( Ibid. ) This distorts the balancing test and makes it possible for any law enforcement method to pass constitutional muster as long as a plausible argument can be made that it might turn out to be effective. If this is the balancing test, it is not a test but a rubber stamp. We also must weigh the intrusion of the roadblock on the individual. There can be no question of the reasonableness of the motorist's expectation of privacy. Though the expectation of privacy in the automobile is not as great as in the home, it is clear from Almeida-Sanchez, supra, 413 U.S. 266, and Delaware v. Prouse, supra, 440 U.S. 648, that motorists do retain a reasonable expectation of considerable privacy in the automobile. The invasiveness of a drunk driving roadblock is far greater than the invasion that the high court has characterized as minimal in the immigration checkpoint. (See United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, supra, 448 U.S. 543, 559 [49 L.Ed.2d 1116, 1129].) In the immigration checkpoint, the immigration agent's primary purpose is not to make arrests. But at a drunk driving roadblock, officers stop individuals with the purpose of determining if they are then committing the crime of drunk driving  a crime now involving considerable public stigma, to say nothing of the substantial criminal penalties that now result from a drunk driving conviction. The United States Supreme Court has repeatedly distinguished the minimal invasion of the administrative inspection from the necessarily hostile, threatening, and frightening intrusion of an investigation for crime. (See, e.g., Camara v. Municipal Court, supra, 387 U.S. 523 at pp. 530, 537 [18 L.Ed.2d 930 at pp. 936, 940].) Moreover, the detention at a drunk driving roadblock is necessarily experienced as personally intrusive, since unlike in the license inspection or immigration checkpoint, the officer's object is to inspect the interior of the vehicle for evidence of crime and to examine the present mental and physical condition of the driver to determine if he or she should be arrested. The majority seem to suggest that as long as a neutral plan assures that the roadblock is run safely and without arbitrariness, the individual's interest in being free from police detention does not weigh in the balance at all. This antiseptic approach denies the unavoidable invasion of privacy which occurs when a citizen is confronted by the police and his demeanor inspected for evidence that he is committing a crime. Furthermore, the protection of the neutral plan is illusory. What recourse does any driver have if the neutral plan was not being followed when he or she was stopped? In the Burlingame example, the plan provided that motorists who refused to stop would be allowed to proceed. Yet one of the participating officers said he would have pursued any motorist who refused to stop. As there is apparently no remedy for violations of the neutral plan, the plan is no protection against arbitrariness. The pervasiveness of the invasion also must be considered. Take one example. The New York City police used 100 officers to operate a series of drunk driving roadblocks from May 27 to June 26, 1983. The police stopped 184,828 cars. There were 222 arrests for drunk driving. (N.Y. Times (June 27, 1983) at p.B1, col. 2, described in Grossman, Sobriety Checkpoints: Roadblocks to Fourth Amendment Protections, supra, 12 Am. J. Crim. L. 123, 157.) [5] During a one-month period, 184,606 people who turned out to be innocent were detained by the police. For every arrest there were 831 innocent drivers whose privacy was infringed. We certainly would be concerned about the propriety of detaining the same number of citizens on our streets for inspection for drug abuse or other crimes. It is one thing to invade personal privacy in order to apprehend dangerous criminals, but when the purported object is deterrence, such mass detentions are a very high price to pay when the effectiveness of such detentions is questionable at best. The invasion of privacy occasioned by these roadblocks also may become pervasive in the sense that the roadblocks will be everywhere. If we approve drunk driving roadblocks, they may appear in every community. This could mean 20 or 30 or more roadblocks in any urban area on any given night. Omnipresent police blockades at each community's border would be not only inconvenient for motorists, but also would be a contradiction of our values as an open and free society. The Fourth Amendment is highly inexpedient to law enforcement, yet to date we have not allowed mass detentions on the theory that these might prove useful in combatting crime. I see no basis for distinguishing a drunk driving roadblock from any other mass detention established to prevent crime or apprehend wrongdoers. While drunk driving is a revolting crime, it is not the only one which the community abhors. If we abandon constitutional protections to combat every abhorrent crime which has captured the public's attention, we will find ourselves naked and unprotected in a hurry.