Court Opinion

ID: 9721046
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 08:47:19.769422+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:23.153842
License: Public Domain

Liacos, C.J.
(concurring). I write separately to reiterate my concern that this court, when faced with a challenge to an automobile roadblock, has allowed itself to be drawn away from the consideration of basic constitutional principles regarding search and seizure law. Commonwealth v. Shields, 402 Mass. 162, 169 (1988) (Liacos, J., dissenting). Rather than assess whether a roadblock seizure is permissible according to the traditional considerations of probable cause or reasonable and articulable suspicion, this court has chosen to engage in a balancing of the public interest involved in a drunk-driving roadblock against an individual’s right to be
*352free from arbitrary interference with his personal security. Id. at 172. See Commonwealth v. Trumble, 396 Mass. 81, 86 (1985). In the process, this court has lost sight of the “fundamental principles of the jurisprudence of search and seizure law under both Federal and State Constitutions,” Shields, supra at 169, thereby putting at risk an individual’s right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. It is my opinion that we should refocus the roadblock debate and base our decisions as to the reasonableness of roadblock seizures on the existence of probable cause and reasonable or articulable suspicion. However, for the purposes of the present case, I accept, as I must, the court’s current analysis of roadblock seizures.
I am gratified by the court’s insistence on strict adherence by the law enforcement authorities to a roadblock plan devised in advance of the roadblock. This standard of compliance will provide some minimal protection to an individual’s right to personal security, while the reasonable substantial compliance standard urged by the dissent would increase greatly the risk of unreasonable seizures by individual police officers in the field. Indeed, under the reasonable substantial compliance standard as envisaged by the dissent, police officers at the scene could choose to continue a roadblock indefinitely, regardless of the duration set down in the roadblock plan, so long as the extended roadblock was operated in the same manner as it had been for the period of time authorized by the plan. Such a standard goes too far in subjecting a motorist’s right of personal security to the discretion of the official in the field. Commonwealth v. Shields, supra at 165. Accordingly, I concur.