Opinion ID: 1573383
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Why Law-Abiding Citizens Might Exit Before the Checkpoint.

Text: 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.