Opinion ID: 1573383
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Subjective Good Faith of Police is Insufficient.

Text: The principal opinion is in conflict with the principles set out in Edmond and applied in cases such as Green and Huguenin . The principal opinion holds that the stop of Mr. Mack is based on individualized suspicion and so is constitutional because, in an effort to limit those stopped to persons engaged in criminal activity, the police tried to set up the checkpoint so as to avoid as much as possible detaining local residents and others who might have a non-criminal basis for exiting the highway. Op. at 709. But, accepting the principal opinion's view as to the motivation behind the ruse used by police, Edmond makes it unmistakably clear that subjective good intent is irrelevant and can play no role in ordinary, probable-cause Fourth Amendment analysis. 531 U.S. at 45, 121 S.Ct. 447. Rather, the Fourth Amendment inquiry is an objective one that must focus on what Edmond calls the programmatic purposes [that] may be relevant to the validity of Fourth Amendment intrusions undertaken pursuant to a general scheme without individualized suspicion. Id. at 45-46, 121 S.Ct. 447. In other words, our inquiry is not whether the police subjectively tried to create a basis for individualized suspicion by setting up the drug checkpoint on a seldom used off-ramp late at night in an area without services. Rather, the inquiry is whether the way the drug checkpoint was in fact set up, considered objectively, created the kind of individualized suspicion required by Edmond . The answer to that question is no, it did not create such individualized suspicion, for numerous reasons.