Court Opinion

ID: 9576436
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:24:22.369844+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:07:41.771850
License: Public Domain

*555RUSSON, Justice,
dissenting:
¶ 37 I concur in Chief Justice Howe’s dissenting opinion, and write separately to express my concern with the ambiguity of the holding of Justice Durham’s opinion. Justice Durham correctly recognizes that at least one purpose of the checkpoint in the instant case — the vehicle equipment violations check — is overly broad. However, her opinion appears to conclude, without any justification, that vehicle checkpoints with multiple purposes are unconstitutional.
¶ 38 Neither this court nor the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized any constitutional limitations on the number of “checks” that a checkpoint plan may require. Rather, the magistrate examining the checkpoint plan, or the court reviewing the checkpoint plan after the fact, must determine whether each “cheek” is independently valid and, as explained by Michigan Department of State Police v. Sitz, 496 U.S. 444, 455, 110 S.Ct. 2481, 110 L.Ed.2d 412 (1990), whether the law enforcement officers are able to carry out each check in a manner that minimizes intrusion and delay. In fact, the Tenth Circuit has upheld a Utah checkpoint that included a list of purposes nearly identical to those in the instant case. See United States v. Hernandez, 1998 U.S.App. LEXIS 27610, at *4-*7 (10th Cir.) (unpublished opinion). The multi-purpose checkpoints in the instant case and in Hernandez both involved checks for vehicle equipment violations, but the vehicle equipment check in Hernandez was properly tailored to an “exterior examination of vehicles for the required lights, turn signals, and other exterior safety devices.” Id. at ⅜6. Thus, the problem with the checkpoint plan in the instant case is not that it listed several purposes, but that not all of its purposes were independently valid.
¶ 39 Justice STEWART and Justice ZIMMERMAN acted prior to their retirement.