Court Opinion

ID: 9741396
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 20:54:55.330754+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:23.796032
License: Public Domain

Boslaugh and Hastings, JJ.,
concurring.
We concur in the judgment of the court. The particular roadblock in this case appears to have violated a generally accepted rule that roadblocks should be established by carefully circumscribed, objective regulations established by high-level administrative officials. Little v. State, 300 Md. 485, 479 A.2d 903 (1984); State v. Hilleshiem, 291 N.W.2d 314 (Iowa 1980).
Although such a rule has merit, it is not, as suggested, supported by the language in Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648, 663, 99 S. Ct. 1391, 59 L. Ed. 2d 660 (1979), preventing the stopping of automobiles “at the unbridled discretion of police officers.” It is important to recognize that Prouse went no further than to declare that traffic stops made in a random manner at the “unbridled discretion of police officers” violate the fourth amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
Prior to the decision in Delaware v. Prouse, supra, it had been the law in this state, both by statute and by the decisions of this court, that a peace officer could stop any motor vehicle at *290any time and require the operator to exhibit his or her operator’s license and the registration for the vehicle. Neb. Rev. Stat. § 60-435 (Reissue 1978); State v. Kretchmar, 201 Neb. 308, 267 N.W.2d 740 (1978); State v. Holmberg, 194 Neb. 337, 231 N.W.2d 672 (1975); State v. Shepardson, 194 Neb. 673, 235 N.W.2d 218 (1975). Although there were conflicts in the cases from other jurisdictions, there was a large body of law which held that random stops for the purpose of enforcing licensing, registration, and safety laws were constitutional.
Although Delaware v. Prouse, supra, declared random stops unconstitutional, it made clear that under proper circumstances a roadblock-type stop may be used as a traffic law enforcement device. The opinion stated at 663:
This holding does not preclude the State of Delaware or other States from developing methods for spot checks that involve less intrusion or that do not involve the unconstrained exercise of discretion. Questioning of all oncoming traffic at roadblock-type stops is one possible alternative. We hold only that persons in automobiles on public roadways may not for that reason alone have their travel and privacy interfered with at the unbridled discretion of police officers.
The opinion recognized the importance of spot checks as an enforcement tool and emphasized that it is the “unconstrained exercise of discretion” that makes a random stop unconstitutional. The opinion suggested that the “ [questioning of all oncoming traffic at roadblock-type stops” is an acceptable alternative. The concurring opinion suggested that stopping “every 10th car to pass a given point” would not be unconstitutional. 440 U.S. at 664.
This view is reinforced by the construction that the U.S. Supreme Court has placed on the Prouse case in its later decisions. In United States v. Villamonte-Marquez, 462 U.S. 579, 589, 103 S. Ct. 2573, 77 L. Ed. 2d 22 (1983), the Court referred to “the preference for roadblocks as opposed to random spot checks expressed in Delaware v. Prouse . . . .” Later in the same opinion the Court stated at 592-93: “Random stops without any articulable suspicion of vehicles away from the border are not permissible under the Fourth Amendment, *291United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, supra; Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648 (1979), but stops at fixed checkpoints or at roadblocks are.”
In United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. 873, 95 S. Ct. 2574, 45 L. Ed. 2d 607 (1975), decided prior to Delaware v. Prouse, supra, the Court noted that Border Patrol agents have no part in enforcing laws that regulate highway use. The Court then stated at 883 n.8: “Our decision thus does not imply that state and local enforcement agencies are without power to conduct such limited stops as are necessary to enforce laws regarding drivers’ licenses, vehicle registration, truck weights, and similar matters.”
In Texas v. Brown, 460 U.S. 730, 103 S. Ct. 1535, 75 L. Ed. 2d 502 (1983), the defendant had been stopped at a “routine driver’s license checkpoint.” Id. at 733. When the police officer who had stopped the defendant asked the defendant for his license, the officer saw a balloon which contained narcotics fall from the defendant’s hand. The U.S. Supreme Court held that the seizure of the balloon was constitutional, since it was in “plain view” and there was no issue concerning the validity of the officer’s initial stop of the vehicle.
In Texas v. Brown, supra, the Court noted that a generalized expectation that some of the automobiles halted at the roadblock, which was located in a “ ‘medium’ area of narcotics traffic,” would contain narcotics or paraphernalia did not make the seizure of the narcotics discovered in “plain view” in the defendant’s vehicle unconstitutional. Id. at 743-44.
The annotation at 37 A.L.R.4th 10 (1985) discusses a number of the cases which have considered the validity of roadblocks to discover vehicular or driving violations. The author notes that such cases have generally held roadblock stops to be reasonable and lawful.
In Little v. State, 300 Md. 485, 501, 479 A.2d 903, 911 (1984), the Maryland Court of Appeals observed:
A majority of courts, however, have sustained the use of roadblocks as a proper law enforcement tool. As a general rule, the constitutionality of traffic checkpoints has been upheld where: (1) the discretion of the officers in the field is carefully circumscribed by clear objective regulations established by high level administrative *292officials; (2) approaching drivers are given adequate warning that there is a roadblock ahead; (3) the likelihood of apprehension, fear or surprise is reduced by a display of legitimate police authority at the roadblock; and (4) vehicles are stopped on a systematic, nonrandom basis that shows drivers they are not being singled out for arbitrary reasons.
(Emphasis supplied.)
In People v. Scott, 63 N.Y.2d 518, 473 N.E.2d 1, 483 N.Y.S.2d 649 (1984), the New York Court of Appeals noted that individualized suspicion is not a prerequisite to a constitutional seizure of an automobile which is “ ‘carried out pursuant to a plan embodying explicit, neutral limitations on the conduct of individual officers’ . . . .” Id. at 525, 473 N.E.2d at 3, 483 N.Y.S.2d at 651. The roadblock involved in that case had been established pursuant to a memorandum of the county sheriff. The procedures established in the memorandum avoided discrimination by providing for the stopping of all vehicles “or every second, third or fourth vehicle . . . .” Id. at 523, 473 N.E.2d at 2, 483 N.Y.S.2d at 650. The court stated:
The fact that the plan contemplated situations in which not every car would be stopped did not affect its validity in view of the specific nondiscriminatory pattern of selection it called for [citations omitted] and of the reasonableness of allowing some cars to pass when traffic became congested [citations omitted].
Id. at 526, 473 N.E.2d at 4, 483 N.Y.S.2d at 652.
The correct rule appears to be that roadblocks are a permitted method of enforcement for laws pertaining to the licensing, registration, and operation of motor vehicles so long as vehicles are not stopped pursuant to the “unbridled discretion” of officers in the field. It is random stops, not “roadblock-type stops,” that are unconstitutional.
The suspension or revocation of an operator’s license cannot be an effective deterrent unless there is some practical method by which those driving without a license can be identified and apprehended. A roadblock or checkpoint may well be the only effective method to enforce this sanction.
This case involves much more than the stopping of an *293intoxicated driver. At issue here is the method by which the State may enforce not only its vehicle licensing, registration, and traffic laws but also vehicle weight laws, fish and game laws, and other similarly licensed and regulated activities.
We subscribe to the following statements of Judge Nolan in his dissenting opinion to Commonwealth v. McGeoghegan, 389 Mass. 137,145, 449 N.E.2d 349, 354 (1983):
If illegal alien traffic and smuggling are sufficiently serious public problems to justify the Border Patrol in stopping vehicles for brief questioning of their occupants at a specific checkpoint despite the absence of articulable facts to justify the stopping of a motor vehicle (see United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U.S. 543, [96 S. Ct. 3074, 49 L. Ed. 2d 1116 (1976)], the “carnage caused by drunk drivers” (South Dakota v. Neville, 459 U.S. 553, 558, [103 S. Ct. 916, 74 L. Ed. 2d 748 (1983)] is even more serious and widespread.
On balance, the inoffensive intrusion of a systematic stopping of all vehicles at a fixed point is a small price to pay for efforts to reduce the frightening slaughter on our highways caused by driving under the influence of liquor.