Opinion ID: 1868000
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Validity of Stop Under Fourth Amendment

Text: The United States Supreme Court has not addressed specifically the validity of entry identification checkpoints. The Court has spoken several times to the Fourth Amendment viability of other roadblocks and/or checkpoints. In United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U.S. 543, 545, 96 S.Ct. 3074, 49 L.Ed.2d 1116 (1976), it held that brief, suspicionless seizures of motorists at fixed Border Patrol checkpoints that were designed to intercept illegal aliens passed Fourth Amendment muster. Likewise, sobriety checkpoints aimed at removing drunk drivers from the road were upheld in Sitz, 496 U.S. at 455, 110 S.Ct. 2481. In Prouse, 440 U.S. at 663, 99 S.Ct. 1391 the Court suggested that a similar type of roadblock aimed at verifying drivers' licenses and vehicle registrations would be permissible in pursuit of highway safety. In Illinois v. Lidster, 540 U.S. 419, 423, 124 S.Ct. 885, 157 L.Ed.2d 843 (2004), the Court considered a highway checkpoint whose primary law enforcement purpose was not to determine whether a vehicle's occupants were committing a crime, but to ask vehicle occupants, as members of the public, for their help in providing information about a crime that had been committed in the same area at about the same time several days earlier. The Court concluded that the checkpoint was constitutional. Id. at 427, 124 S.Ct. 885. The United States Supreme Court has made clear, however, that roadblocks aimed at general crime control contravene the Fourth Amendment. See City of Indianapolis v. Edmond, 531 U.S. 32, 121 S.Ct. 447, 148 L.Ed.2d 333 (2000). In Edmond , the City of Indianapolis instituted roadblocks designed to discover and interdict the actual trafficking of illegal narcotics. Upon review of its previous decisions in this area, the Court determined 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, and noted that it had suggested in Prouse that [it] would not credit the `general interest in crime control' as justification for a regime of suspicionless stops. Id. (quoting Prouse, 440 U.S. at 659 n. 18, 99 S.Ct. 1391). The Court explained its concern with such seizures: Without drawing the line at roadblocks designed primarily to serve the general interest in crime control, the Fourth Amendment would do little to prevent such intrusions from becoming a routine part of American life. Id. at 42, 121 S.Ct. 447. The Court thus determined that it could not sanction stops justified only by the generalized and ever-present possibility that interrogation and inspection may reveal that any given motorist has committed some crime. Id. at 44, 121 S.Ct. 447. Accordingly, the Court decline[d] to approve a program whose primary purpose is ultimately indistinguishable from the general interest in crime control, id., and held that, [b]ecause the primary purpose of the Indianapolis checkpoint program is ultimately indistinguishable from the general interest in crime control, the checkpoints violate the Fourth Amendment. Id. at 48, 121 S.Ct. 447. In contrast with the roadblock in Edmond , the checkpoint at issue in this case was aimed not at apprehending those already involved in illegal activity, but at preventing some ill-defined group of persons from engaging in such activity in the first place, at least at a particular location. Officer Brown testified that the CHA was having a lot of problems with drugs and various other type of crimes at the time. In response, the CHA devised the checkpoint plan to limit those who could enter its housing developments. The goal of the plan was to help the people's quality of life issues in there, keep people out of there that were committing crimes and were just loitering around, littering, dropping off trash and so forth and committing other kind of crime.  (emphasis added). The trial court described the operation as an entry checkpoint for the purpose of excluding trespassers. By the State's own admission in its brief to this Court, the CHA's interest in establishing the checkpoint was reducing crime and excluding trespassers and enforcing lease agreement provisions intended to decrease crime and drug use. [8] Such a checkpoint is not tenable under the Fourth Amendment. Edmond, 531 U.S. at 48, 121 S.Ct. 447; see also Hagood v. Town of Town Creek, 628 So.2d 1057, 1060 (Ala. Crim.App.1993) (holding roadblock established to prevent fighting, public drunkenness, and disorderly conduct at apartment complex violated Fourth Amendment because the state's general interest in law enforcement simply does not outweigh the liberty interests of those seized, however brief the seizure may be). We hold, therefore, that the checkpoint at issue in this case violated Defendant's right against unreasonable seizures under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution.