Opinion ID: 1573383
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: application of fourth amendment principles to mack

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.
Most basically, it is a contradiction in terms to say that police had a basis for individualized suspicion of a motorist by setting up a checkpoint that had the admitted programmatic purpose of searching for those engaged in drug-related activity, yet stopped all those who exited the highway at a certain point. Here, the record below indicates that some 60 to 150 cars exited during this drug checkpoint's operation. Under the principal opinion's approach, a suspicion therefore arose as to all 60 to 150 exiters, based solely on the fact that they had exited the highway after, presumably, seeing the drug checkpoint sign. This type of suspicion is hardly individualized. If the Court approves this procedure today, it, in effect, will have approved group suspicion as a basis for stopping each individual in the group. Neither Edmond nor any other Supreme Court case, nor the Fourth Amendment, support such a basis for approval of a drug checkpoint.
Even if one could look at the reasons why this group of motorists exited the highway as a whole and could consider the effectiveness of the checkpoint's bait and switch approach in separating criminals from law-abiding citizens, the approach taken by the principal opinion would be flawed. Such an approach is in conflict with the admonition of the United States Supreme Court in Michigan v. Sitz, 496 U.S. 444, 110 S.Ct. 2481, 110 L.Ed.2d 412 (1990), that courts must not consider the relative effectiveness of a chosen path of law enforcement activity in determining its constitutional propriety. So long as the technique employed is reasonable, the decision whether to use it or some other approach, whether more or less effective, is left in the hands of law enforcement officials. Id. at 453-54, 110 S.Ct. 2481. All members of this Court would no doubt agree that, applying this rule, a court should not disapprove an otherwise constitutional seizure on the basis that it is not as effective as some other approaches. But, conversely, it follows that neither can a court approve an otherwise unconstitutional seizuresuch as one made at a drug checkpointon the basis that it is more effective at creating group suspicion than is the alternative approach disapproved in Edmond . As applied here, this means that the principal opinion's attempt to distinguish Edmond on the basis that it involved random seizures of all those who drove down a highway, whereas here the police stopped only those who drove off an exit ramp after being warned of a drug checkpoint, is of no avail. It is simply an attempt to compare the effectiveness of various law enforcement techniques. While an interesting issue for academic study, it cannot make constitutional a seizure that intrinsically fails to meet Fourth Amendment standards.
Although not stated as such, the principal opinion, in effect, tries to avoid this fundamental flaw in its approach by arguing that the technique used here is so effective that it goes beyond being merely a more effective law enforcement technique, and enters a new level, itself becoming the basis for a finding of individualized suspicion. Neither the record, nor common human experience as to the behavior of a group of persons in the fact situation in this case, supports the principal opinion's assumption that only those engaged in criminal activity would take the bait and exit the highway at Old Cap Au Gris in response to the subterfuge the police employed here. Indeed, even if Edmond permitted the police to avoid its bar on drug checkpoints and create individualized suspicion by organizing a group drug checkpoint specifically targeted at criminals, it would be the state's burden to show that it had done so and so should be exempt from the general prohibition on drug checkpoints set down in Edmond and its progeny. Sec. 542.296.6. This record simply does not permit such a finding, for the police testimony as to their activities is so vague, inexact and at times self-contradictory that no firm numbers can be determined as to how many cars exited or as to how many arrests were made. [3] This Court's opinion in Damask does contain information about the success of the ruse drug checkpoint in that case, but it shows that the checkpoint there was far less effective in targeting drug or other criminal activity than was the one disapproved as a fishing expedition in Edmond . In Edmond , 1,161 vehicles were stopped and 104 motorists were arrested; 55 of those arrests were drug-related and the remainder were not. The Supreme Court noted that the overall `hit rate' of the program was thus approximately nine percent, somewhat over half of those arrests being for drugs. 531 U.S. at 35, 121 S.Ct. 447. In Damask , by contrast, approximately 66 cars that exited the highway after seeing the misleading sign were stopped. Of those, ten were searched, and only one person, the defendant, was arrested. This is an arrest ratio of 1.5%. [4] 936 S.W.2d at 568. Even if one assumes that this arrest ratio was unusually low and that the ratio in the instant case, although unclear, would be higher, it must be recalled that the Supreme Court found a nine percent hit rate in Edmond to be inadequate to create individualized suspicion. Whatever the average hit rate may be in Missouri ruse checkpoints, it is clear that it is not sufficient to make them more than just another police technique; it is not enough to elevate ruse checkpoints to the next level, so that the ruse itself creates the kind of individualized suspicion required by Edmond .
However suspicious exiting a highway before a drug checkpoint sounds like it should be when considered at first blush, the reasons that it is not a proper basis for targeting criminal activity become evident upon further analysis. It is not only criminals who may wish to avoid unwanted contact with the police. A motorist encountering a sign warning of a drug checkpoint ahead may have any number of legitimate reasons not to travel through that checkpoint. The reasons for desiring not to encounter a checkpoint could range from a desire to get to one's home or other area destination, to a desire to avoid having to deal with a delay in one's travel plans, to a fear of the police due to prior unpleasant encounters with other officers in the past. The latter may particularly be true where the driver is not from the area where the checkpoint is located and fears that, as an outsider, he or she may be a target. The driver may be a member of an ethnic minority and be concerned about being treated unfairly due to racial or ethnic profiling, particularly where, as in the case of a drug checkpoint, the very purpose of the stop is to elicit signs of suspicious behavior. Or, as stated by the Sixth Circuit in invalidating a ruse stop similar to the one employed here, an ordinary law-abiding citizen might take the exit simply to avoid the unusual process of being stopped on the Interstate highway. Huguenin, 154 F.3d at 561. Moreover, it must be remembered that the drug checkpoint that the police made drivers believe was one mile ahead on the highway itself would have been unconstitutional under Edmond , which invalidated just such checkpoints precisely because they were not based on individualized suspicion of criminal activity. There is something fundamentally unsettling and counter-intuitive about labeling as suspicious a person's conduct in avoiding the state's own unconstitutional conduct. The driver would be put in a Catch-22 of either proceeding down the highway and being stopped at an unconstitutional checkpoint, or exiting to avoid it and risk being stopped at a ruse checkpoint set up to catch those who had exited. The public should not be put to such a choice. Other courts dealing with the issue of whether individualized suspicion is created by the action of an individual car in turning around as it approaches a sobriety or drug checkpoint express similar concerns about stopping motorists who have legitimate reasons not to wish to encounter police. For instance, State v. Bryson stated, in the context of deciding that the driver's turn shortly before a checkpoint did not in that context raise a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity: This conclusion is reflective of the realization that citizens will avoid contact with police for reasons other than fear of being caught for a crime they have committed. A completely innocent person may wish to avoid the delay which a discussion with police may entail; others have a fear of police authority; still others resent and seek to avoid the hassle of a stop which lacks any basis. 142 Ohio App.3d 397, 755 N.E.2d 964, 969 (2001). See also State v. Talbot, 792 P.2d 489, 495 (Utah App.1990) (We decline to adopt the position that avoiding a roadblock creates an articulable suspicion for a stop. We see no distinction between the person who avoids confrontation at a roadblock and one who avoids confrontation with an officer under any other scenario). [5] Fears such as those just mentioned are particularly likely to occur where, as here, the checkpoint is set up at night, in a remote area, and is come upon by surprise. This was the very reason that Judge White dissented from this Court's decision to approve the checkpoints in Damask . 936 S.W.2d at 575. He cautioned that the surreptitious nature of the drug checkpoints in that case made them more comparable to the roving patrols disapproved of by the United States Supreme Court in Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648, 653-654, 99 S.Ct. 1391, 59 L.Ed.2d 660 (1979), than to the fixed checkpoint stops that can be seen on an open highway, alerting drivers with lighted signs, and that are surrounded by police cars and other stopped vehicles. Id. at 577. Checkpoints secretly set up on an exit ramp have no such notice, and, Judge White noted, serious concerns are raised by the intrusiveness of these stops to law-abiding citizens. Id. He concluded that [i]t is difficult to envision a scenario more likely to engender fright or confusion in an innocent highway traveler..... Id.