Court Opinion

ID: 9715552
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 06:08:28.698719+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:35.754603
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE HEIPLE, also dissenting: On November 3, 1991, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution offered a compelling account of the state of this nation's highways: “An estimated 22,084 Americans were killed [in 1990] in crashes involving intoxicated drivers, nearly equaling the number of murders and tripling the number believed slain in drug disputes. *** An additional 355,000 people were injured in DUI crashes.” (Georgia’s DUI Scandal, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, November 3, 1991, §A, at 1.) This was by no means atypical. “Drunk drivers cause an annual death toll of over 25,000, and in the same time span cause nearly one million personal injuries and more than five billion dollars in property damage.” 4 W. LaFave, Search & Seizure § 10.8(d), at 71 (2d ed. 1987). Over 20,000 lives lost per year. Many times that injured. When you factor in friends and relatives, it is safe to assume that over a million people are adversely affected by drunks on the road every year. The loss that society suffers due to drunks on the road is staggering. This backdrop is important because it illuminates the need that faced our General Assembly when it passed the statute that the majority today finds unconstitutional. This need is stated quite simply: to rid our roads of drunk drivers. Coupled with this need is the unique problem that accompanies any approach designed to keep drunks off the roads — the transitory nature of intoxication. Faced with these facts, the legislature came up with an appropriate compromise between a person’s right to be left alone and the general population’s right to be left alive. It conditioned the State’s grant of driving privileges (a grant that is certainly within the State’s power to give and withhold) upon the consent by the driver to an alcohol test should he be at fault in an accident. Failure to live up to the driver’s end of the bargain would result in summary suspension of his license; not as punishment, but rather to help rid the road of potential drunk drivers. This exchange between the State and its drivers is a fair one. I therefore find it incredible that the court today holds that this agreement between State and driver violates the United States and Illinois Constitutions. I write separately to voice my strong disagreement with the reading that the majority gives to those documents. I first address the majority’s analysis of the Federal Constitution’s fourth amendment. The majority correctly concludes that these tests are searches within the meaning of the amendment. It is at this point that the majority and I part ways, however. Relevant to the constitutionality of the tests at issue is Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives’ Association (1989), 489 U.S. 602, 103 L. Ed. 2d 639, 109 S. Ct. 1402. In that case, the United States Supreme Court interpreted the requirements that the fourth amendment imposes upon a government before it may conduct a search of a person. That Court’s reasoning fully supports the constitutionality of the tests at issue. As noted in the majority opinion, Skinner involved railway employees who were required to submit to alcohol tests if they were involved in certain types of accidents, regardless of whether there was individualized suspicion of intoxication. The Supreme Court held that the fourth amendment did not prohibit these tests. While that Court agreed that such tests are searches within the meaning of the amendment, it ruled that the searches were acceptable, in part because of the need for government regulation of the railroad industry. The Court in Skinner took great care to point out that the reasonableness of a search depends on the surrounding circumstances. The circumstances that the Skinner Court gave importance to were: the fact that the railway industry is heavily regulated; the fact that delay would frustrate the government’s purpose, since intoxication is not lasting; and the relatively minor intrusion that these tests impose. In the instant case, the statute deals with the State’s highways. Although highways are not as regulated as railways, they are nevertheless highly regulated. The final two circumstances cited in Skinner are present here for precisely the same reasons: delay in testing while individualized suspicion can be established would frustrate the government’s objective of identifying and removing drunk drivers from the roads, and the tests are minimally intrusive. Finally, great weight should be given to the fact that a person consents to this search by driving on the State’s highways, pursuant to the statute at issue. This consent is valid and enforceable. The State is not required to grant driving privileges to everybody. It is well within the State’s discretion to limit driving privileges to those who agree to a minimally intrusive search for intoxication after they cause an accident. Having consented to this search, a driver is in no position to complain when the State seeks to enforce this agreement. The cumulation of these circumstances indicates that, as in Skinner, the alcohol tests are reasonable searches and not prohibited by the fourth amendment. The United States Supreme Court’s decision in Michigan Department of State Police v. Sitz (1990), 496 U.S. 444, 110 L. Ed. 2d 412, 110 S. Ct. 2481, and this court’s opinion in People v. Bartley (1985), 109 Ill. 2d 273, provide further support for the constitutionality of these tests. In Sitz, the United States Supreme Court was faced with the constitutionality of highway sobriety checkpoints. The Court ruled that these were searches, but concluded that they were reasonable and therefore constitutional despite the lack of individualized suspicion. This court came to the same conclusion in Bartley. The majority correctly points out that underlying the rationale in both Sitz and Bartley was the short amount of time (less than a minute) that the search took to conduct. Here, on the other hand, the driver must be taken into the police station, given field sobriety tests, and then undergo the alcohol tests. In the appellee’s case, this took 20 minutes. What the majority fails to note is that the driver is brought to the station and given the field sobriety tests under a different statute than the one held unconstitutional today. Regardless of whether the statute under attack is enforced, the driver is already committed to most of the detention time. The additional test required of the driver adds only a short amount of time to this detention, and like Sitz and Bartley, is not unreasonable. Further, it should be noted that these tests are administered only after a person causes an accident. A person involved in an accident normally expects to be delayed for a significant amount of time. Therefore, gone from the analyses in Sitz and Bartley is any expectation the driver might have of promptly resuming his trip. Finally, I disagree with the majority that the search violates the Illinois Constitution. The majority’s entire analysis on this point is simply a comparison to our recent decision in In re May 1991 Will County Grand Jury (1992), 152 Ill. 2d 381. I do not find the cases factually similar. In Will County, we discussed a grand jury’s ability to subpoena hair samples from a person who is not charged with any offense. The instant case involves a police officer at the scene of an accident instead of a cloistered grand jury; it involves a person who, as a driver, has less of an expectation of privacy than a person in his home or on the street; it involves the reasoned anticipation by the General Assembly that a person who causes an accident may likely be intoxicated; it involves a need for quick investigation since drunkenness is fleeting; and it involves a well-documented situation that causes thousands of deaths per year. Will County is inapposite. Deaths due to drunk driving are reaching epic proportions. Before allowing a person to drive, a State should be allowed to require the minimal search at issue here as a condition to granting driving privileges. A person should be allowed to consent to such a search by accepting the driving privileges as well as all the responsibilities that go with those privileges and should be held to this consent. The People should be allowed to live with the safer highways that the enforcement of such agreements will produce. Neither the United States nor the Illinois Constitution is a barrier to this attempt to create safer roads. I dissent.