Opinion ID: 1109078
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Checkpoints under Prior Louisiana Cases

Text: The Louisiana Constitution echoes the Fourth Amendment's mandate and provides, every person shall be secure in his person, property, communications, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches, seizures or invasions of privacy. La. Const. art. I, § 5. This court has considered the constitutionality of checkpoints to check for drunken motorists in State v. Parms, 523 So.2d 1293 (La.1988), and State v. Church, 538 So.2d 993 (La.1989); and to investigate game limit violations in State v. McHugh, 92-1852 (La.1/6/94), 630 So.2d 1259. In Parms, this court concluded that the particular DWI checkpoint under consideration failed to pass muster under the federal constitution. [5] Although the officers had stopped every car at the checkpoint unless they were all occupied with other vehicles, the record in Parms contained no evidence that: (1) police administrative officials had previously adopted guidelines governing the operation of the checkpoint; (2) the checkpoint had been established at a spot likely to snare drunken drivers; (3) the particular checkpoint in fact had significant success (the officers kept no statistics on how many cars were stopped compared to the number of DWI arrests); or (4) the checkpoints were generally more effective than random suspicion-and-violation based stops. 523 So.2d at 1302-03. On the other hand, some evidence did indicate that the police had set up the checkpoint to keep the officers busy for the night. Id. at 1302. Significantly, we observed that the officers were also checking driver's licenses, proof of insurance and inspection stickers. Id. at 1294. In fact, the defendant in Parms had not been driving erratically when he was stopped at the checkpoint and asked for his driver's license. It was only after the officer detected the strong order of alcohol and ordered Parms to pull over to the shoulder of the road, that it immediately became obvious once he got out of his vehicle that the defendant was highly intoxicated. Id. at 1295. Although the stop in Parms began with a regulatory inspection, we characterized the police operation as a DWI checkpoint because the officers admitted that the real purpose of the roadblock was a sobriety check. Id. at 1295. In Church, this court held that while DWI checkpoints conducted according to neutral criteria [6] may pass muster at the federal level, Article I, § 5 of the Louisiana Constitution affords broader protection to our citizens than the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. In Church, the state stipulated that the defendant was not observed committing any violation and was stopped solely because of the checkpoint. 538 So.2d at 995. We concluded that the state could not justify intruding on the defendant's right to be left alone when the record indicated the checkpoints did not prove very effective, yielding an average of 1.5 DWI arrests for every 100 cars stopped. Id. at 997. As in Parms, the stops in Church began with a driver's license check and developed into more extended detentions if the officers detected signs of intoxication. 538 So.2d at 994. Also as in Parms, the officers in Church characterized their stop location as a DWI checkpoint. Id. In contrast, in McHugh, this court held that wildlife agents could conduct random and suspicionless stops of hunters departing from a wildlife habitat in open season and detain them for the limited purpose of checking licenses and requesting pertinent game information without violating either the state or federal constitutions. To justify the seizure under the Louisiana Constitution, the McHugh court crafted a specialized test that required: (1) a compelling state interest; (2) special governmental needs outside the ordinary law enforcement context; (3) a stop less invasive than an arrest; and (4) no less restrictive means available to monitor violations. McHugh, 630 So.2d at 1264. Under that test, we reasoned that the state's interest in preserving and managing its wildlife preserves was compelling and not easily accomplished by any other means, and that the intrusion on the individual's freedom was comparatively minimal and easily controllable, i.e., individuals could avoid the stops by not hunting at all. Id. at 1269. McHugh distinguished Church and Parms on the basis that DWI stops involve traditional law enforcement functions, intrude on the driver's privacy significantly, and succeed only minimally in ferreting out drunken drivers. Id. at 1268. By contrast, license and game checks form part of an intricate regulatory scheme protecting the vital resources of the state, have only incidental law enforcement consequences, and intrude on hunters' privacy expectations only minimally. Id. at 1270. Initially, we find that the distinctions made in Parms and Church in the context of automobile checkpoints, and McHugh for hunting license checkpoints, create the anomaly that preservation of the state's wildlife is a more compelling governmental interest than the protection of human life from drunken drivers on our public roadways. We reject the reasoning of these cases and refuse to further a fractured approach to constitutional analysis for the reasons discussed below. The State argues that insurance checkpoints are valid administrative violations checkpoints that are statutorily authorized by the legislature and thus more closely resemble the hunting license checkpoints in McHugh. Under Louisiana law, every vehicle registered in the state must be covered by an automobile liability insurance policy within specified liability limits. La.Rev.Stat. 32:861(A)(1). To ensure compliance, the statutory scheme requires that proof of liability insurance be carried in the vehicle at all times. See La.Rev.Stat. 32:863.1(A). To enforce this requirement, La.Rev.Stat. 32:863.1(B) provides: When a law enforcement officer stops a vehicle at an administrative violations checkpoint, ... the law enforcement officer shall determine if the owner or lessee of each vehicle is in compliance with the provisions of this Section which require evidence of liability insurance or other security to be contained in the vehicle. If the owner or lessee is not in compliance with those provisions, the law enforcement officer shall take the actions specified in this Section. We note that the privacy compromised at DWI stops, at which drivers would presumably be required to demonstrate their sobriety in some manner, appears greater than that involved at the insurance checkpoints. On the other hand, given the standard use of automobiles as a means of transportation, the stops appear far less avoidable than the hunting license stops conducted by wildlife agents in McHugh. More importantly, we acknowledge that insurance checkpoints further an administrative goal and do not involve traditional law enforcement functions as do DWI checkpoints, and therefore would be distinguishable on that basis under our reasoning in McHugh. However, it becomes impossible as a practical matter to distinguish one kind of checkpoint from another under the Louisiana Constitution because checkpoints of this nature can serve multiple purposes. [7] The stops in Parms and Church began with regulatory checks for driver's licenses and insurance, but were nevertheless characterized as DWI checkpoints because that is how the officers described their operations. After careful consideration, we decline to draw a distinction that makes the result in a given case depend on how police characterize the checkpoint. If the defendant in the present case had staggered on foot down the Earhart overpass in an obviously intoxicated condition and had been arrested for DWI in addition to his other traffic offenses, this case would be another Parms or Church, but for the fact that the police labeled the stop an insurance checkpoint. In both situations, the police would have observed behavior that gave them reasonable suspicion to suspect a DWI violation while stopping motorists to check for regulatory violations. While checkpoints of this nature presumably involve merely providing a law enforcement agent with proof of insurance and therefore appear less intrusive than the DWI checkpoints which requires the vehicle's operator to demonstrate his sobriety in some manner, Parms and Church reflect how easily one may evolve into the other. [8] We conclude that a consistent approach to checkpoints, regardless of which laws they are designed to enforce, can be implemented that withstands scrutiny under the Louisiana Constitution.