Opinion ID: 2544571
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Heading: The Constitutionality of Traffic Checkpoints

Text: It is appropriate to begin our analysis with a review of the constitutional underpinnings of a traffic checkpoint (sometimes referred to as a police roadblock) in which government authorities briefly detain persons occupying vehicles who have exhibited no suspicious behavior and without an individualized determination of probable cause to believe that illegal conduct is occurring. In pertinent part, the Fourth Amendment provides: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated[.] The basic purpose of [the Fourth] Amendment, as recognized in countless decisions of [the United States Supreme Court] is to safeguard the privacy and security of individuals against arbitrary invasions by governmental officials. The Fourth Amendment thus gives concrete expression to a right of the people which `is basic to a free society.' Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U.S. 25, 27, 69 S.Ct. 1359, 93 L.Ed. 1782 (1949).
In Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968), the United States Supreme Court established that even a brief detention of a person for questioning by a police officer, known as a stop and frisk, constitutes a seizure within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution, and therefore may properly be undertaken only if the police officer has a reasonable suspicion based upon objective, articulable facts that the subject of the inquiry may be involved in some criminal activity. [W]henever a police officer accosts an individual and restrains his freedom to walk away, he has `seized' that person. Id. at 16, 88 S.Ct. 1868. Our predecessor court, in Phillips v. Commonwealth, 473 S.W.2d 135 (Ky. 1971), concluded that Terry 's requirement for objective, articulable suspicion applied to automobile stops: [T]he search of an individual regardless of whether he is in his home, in an automobile, or walking on the street is governed by the Fourth Amendment. The Unites States Supreme Court reached the same conclusion in United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. 873, 881-82, 95 S.Ct. 2574, 45 L.Ed.2d 607 (1975): We hold that when an officer's observations lead him reasonably to suspect that a particular vehicle may contain aliens who are illegally in the country, he may stop the car briefly and investigate the circumstances that provoke suspicion. As in Terry, the stop and inquiry must be reasonably related in scope to the justification for their initiation. It is now well established that stopping an automobile and detaining its occupants is a `seizure' within the meaning of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments, even when the purpose of the stop is limited and the resulting detention quite brief. Prouse, 440 U.S. at 653, 99 S.Ct. 1391; see also Buchanon, 122 S.W.3d at 568.
A traffic checkpoint inherently generates tension between an individual's legitimate privacy interests under the Fourth Amendment and the state's responsibility for law enforcement and public safety concerns. Thus, while the Fourth Amendment generally bars police officers from effecting a search or seizure without individualized suspicion, nevertheless, some searches and seizures conducted without specific grounds to suspect particular individuals of wrongdoing have been upheld. The United States Supreme Court has recognized exceptions to the general rule in cases where the government has special needs that are important enough to override the individual's acknowledged privacy interest, [and] sufficiently vital to suppress the Fourth Amendment's normal requirement of individualized suspicion. Chandler v. Miller, 520 U.S. 305, 311-18, 117 S.Ct. 1295, 137 L.Ed.2d 513 (1997); Accordingly, in the context of a traffic checkpoint, the United States Supreme Court has recognized certain limited circumstances in which an individual's liberty must yield to the sufficiently compelling concerns of the government such that a stop may be effectuated without individualized suspicion. These circumstances include:  A brief, suspicionless detention of motorists at a fixed border patrol checkpoint designed to insure border security and intercept illegal aliens. See United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U.S. 543 [96 S.Ct. 3074, 49 L.Ed.2d 1116] (1976).  A roadblock to check each passing vehicle for the purpose of verifying drivers' licenses and vehicle registrations. See Prouse, 440 U.S. 648 [99 S.Ct. 1391].  A sobriety checkpoint aimed at removing drunk drivers from the road. See Michigan Dept. of State Police v. Sitz, 496 U.S. 444 [110 S.Ct. 2481, 110 L.Ed.2d 412] (1990).  A carefully tailored information-seeking highway checkpoint briefly stopping vehicles to request public assistance in solving a recent, specifically identified crime that occurred on the same highway (as opposed to discovering unknown crimes of a general sort) See Elinois [ Illinois ] v. Lidsier [ Lidster ], 540 U.S. 419 [124 S.Ct. 885, 157 L.Ed.2d 843] (2004). In City of Indianapolis v. Edmond, 531 U.S. 32, 37-38, 121 S.Ct. 447, 148 L.Ed.2d 333 (2000), the Supreme Court determined that a primary purpose of general crime control, i.e., interdicting illegal narcotics, was not sufficiently vital to justify a checkpoint program that stopped motorists with no indicia of individualized suspicion. The Court noted that it had never approved a checkpoint program whose primary purpose was to detect evidence of ordinary criminal wrongdoing. Id. at 41, 121 S.Ct. 447. We hasten to note here that the United States Supreme Court in Edmond explicitly recognized that emergency circumstances in grave situations would substantially alter the analysis. For example . . . the Fourth Amendment would almost certainly permit an appropriately tailored roadblock set up to thwart an imminent terrorist attack or to catch a dangerous criminal who is likely to flee by way of a particular route. . . . While we do not limit the purposes that may justify a checkpoint program to any rigid set of categories, we decline to approve a program whose primary purpose is ultimately indistinguishable from the general interest in crime control. Edmond, 531 U.S. at 44, 121 S.Ct. 447 (emphasis added).
The Fourth Amendment protects a person from unreasonable searches and seizures. The essential purpose of the proscriptions in the Fourth Amendment is to impose a standard of reasonableness upon the exercise of discretion by government officials, including law enforcement agents, in order to safeguard the privacy and security of individuals against arbitrary invasions. . . . Thus, the permissibility of a particular law enforcement practice is judged by balancing its intrusion on the individual's Fourth Amendment interests against its promotion of legitimate governmental interests. Prouse, 440 U.S. at 653-654, 99 S.Ct. 1391 (citations and footnotes omitted). The reasonableness of intrusions into Fourth Amendment protections, and hence, the constitutionality of intrusions such as a brief traffic checkpoint seizure, involves a balancing test described in Brown v. Texas, 443 U.S. 47, 99 S.Ct. 2637, 61 L.Ed.2d 357 (1979). This test is stated as a weighing 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. at 51, 99 S.Ct. 2637. In Buchanon, [5] we offered our most comprehensive review of the limited circumstances that may justify a traffic checkpoint and we recognized the applicability of the Brown v. Texas balancing test. Buchanon, 122 S.W.3d at 568. We suggested that to assess the constitutionality of a traffic checkpoint, a court should first determine the primary purpose of the checkpoint. If the court finds that the purpose behind the checkpoint has previously been held to violate the Constitution, then there is no need to perform the balancing test prescribed in Brown. Otherwise, the balancing test should be applied to the facts. We also set forth in Buchanon a non-exclusive set of factors to guide the analysis when the reasonableness of a checkpoint must be determined. We need not apply that criteria to the checkpoint in the instant case, nor do we now consider the balancing test of Brown, or address the arguments of the parties pertaining thereto, because, for the reasons explained below, we conclude that the roadblock subject to this review lacked a valid, constitutional purpose.