Opinion ID: 1060997
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: constitutionality of sobriety roadblocks

Text: We continue our analysis by examining how the United States Supreme Court has interpreted the Fourth Amendment requirement that a seizure must be reasonable. In general, whenever a police officer accosts an individual and restrains his freedom to walk away, he has `seized' that person for the purpose of Fourth Amendment analysis. Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 16, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1877, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968). Obviously, a formal arrest is a seizure of the person and to be considered reasonable, it must be founded upon probable cause to believe a person has committed a criminal offense. Whether probable cause is present depends upon whether the facts and circumstances and reliable information known to the police officer at the time of the arrest were sufficient to warrant a prudent man in believing that the [individual] had committed an offense. Beck v. Ohio, 379 U.S. 89, 91, 85 S.Ct. 223, 225, 13 L.Ed.2d 142 (1964). The Fourth Amendment is also implicated in encounters between police officers and citizens that do not amount to full-scale arrests. In Terry v. Ohio, supra , for example, the Supreme Court stressed that [i]t is quite plain that the Fourth Amendment governs `seizures' of the person which do not eventuate in a trip to the station house and prosecution for the crime  `arrests' in traditional terminology. Accordingly, the Court held that in some cases, an officer may briefly detain an individual with less than probable cause so long as he or she has a reasonable suspicion, based on specific and articulable facts, that a crime has been or is about to be committed. 392 U.S. at 16, 21, 88 S.Ct. at 1877, 1880. This so-called investigatory stop, which is less intrusive than a full-scale arrest, may be made upon a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity, which is a less demanding standard than probable cause. Alabama v. White, 496 U.S. 325, 330, 110 S.Ct. 2412, 2416, 110 L.Ed.2d 301 (1990). In analyzing the reasonableness of a seizure less intrusive than a traditional arrest in later cases, the Supreme Court, as it did in Terry , balanced the public interest against the Fourth Amendment interest of the individual. 392 U.S. at 20-21, 88 S.Ct. at 1879; United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. 873, 95 S.Ct. 2574, 45 L.Ed.2d 607 (1975). The balancing test cited in Terry stemmed from Camara v. Municipal Court, supra , in which the Court weighed three significant factors in invalidating warrantless administrative searches of buildings to detect conditions hazardous to public health and safety: the public interest to be achieved, the ability to achieve the public interest, and the invasion caused to the citizen's privacy. 387 U.S. at 534, 87 S.Ct. at 1733. This balancing approach was applied to a fixed checkpoint stop for the first time in United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U.S. 543, 96 S.Ct. 3074, 49 L.Ed.2d 1116 (1976). There, the court applied the balancing test to uphold fixed checkpoints near the border at which all vehicles were stopped. The court determined that these checkpoints served a strong government interest by enabling law enforcement officers to detect illegal aliens and that the intrusions on motorists caused by the checkpoint stop were slight. While acknowledging that the stops constituted seizures, the court concluded that the checkpoints advanced the law enforcement interest to a greater degree than stops requiring individualized, reasonable suspicion. Later, Michigan v. Sitz, 496 U.S. 444, 453, 110 S.Ct. 2481, 2485, 110 L.Ed.2d 412 (1990), was the first case where the United States Supreme Court specifically applied the balancing analysis and held that a state's use of a highway sobriety checkpoint does not per se violate the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The roadblock challenged in that case was established pursuant to a sobriety checkpoint pilot program developed by the Michigan Department of State Police. As provided under the guidelines, all vehicles passing through the checkpoint were stopped and their drivers briefly examined for signs of intoxication. In cases where a checkpoint officer detected signs of intoxication, the motorist was directed to a location out of the traffic flow where an officer checked the motorist's drivers' license and registration and, if warranted, conducted further sobriety tests and made an arrest. All other drivers were permitted to resume their journey. The checkpoint was operated for 75 minutes, during which 26 vehicles were stopped. The average delay was 25 seconds for each vehicle. Two motorists were detained for field sobriety testing and one was arrested. Id. After observing that the roadblock stop was a seizure under the Fourth Amendment, the Sitz court reviewed the three-part balancing analysis applied in Brown v. Texas, supra , and other earlier cases. The court said that the reasonableness of a seizure which is less intrusive than a traditional arrest depends on a balancing of the gravity of the public concerns served by the seizure, the degree to which the seizure advances the public interest, and the severity of the interference with individual liberty. Id., 443 U.S. at 50-51, 99 S.Ct. at 2640. The Brown court explained the basis for the balancing test: A central concern in balancing these competing considerations in a variety of settings has been to assure that an individual's reasonable expectation of privacy is not subject to arbitrary invasions solely at the unfettered discretion of officers in the field. [Citations omitted]. To this end, the Fourth Amendment requires that a seizure must be based on specific, objective facts indicating that society's legitimate interests require the seizure of the particular individual, or that the seizure must be carried out pursuant to a plan embodying explicit, neutral limitations on the conduct of individual officers. Id. Applying the public interest test to sobriety roadblocks, the Sitz court emphasized the magnitude of the drunk driving problem and the states' strong interest in solving it. Reviewing the second part of the analysis  the degree to which the seizure advanced the public interest  the court stressed that the empirical data showed 1.6% of the motorists stopped at the Michigan checkpoint had been arrested for driving under the influence. The court also observed that an expert witness had testified that studies of checkpoints used in other states revealed that about 1% of all motorists stopped were arrested for drunk driving. Id., 496 U.S. at 455, 110 S.Ct. at 2487-2488. [5] Finally, with regard to the individual liberty analysis, the court, stressing that the checkpoints were selected pursuant to guidelines and that uniformed police officers stopped every car, concluded that the measure of the intrusion on [law abiding] motorists stopped briefly at sobriety checkpoints is slight. Id., 496 U.S. at 451-453, 110 S.Ct. at 2486-2487. Dissenting in Sitz, Justices Brennan and Stevens argued that the majority failed to analyze whether sobriety checkpoints advance the public interest to any degree greater than traditional stops based on suspicion and, therefore, the state had failed to show that sobriety checkpoint seizures were reasonable. Id.