Court Opinion

ID: 9566191
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:34:49.095052+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:28:24.877983
License: Public Domain

ORME, Judge
(concurring specially):
While I otherwise concur fully in the court’s opinion, I have two difficulties with the discussion treating the roadblock under article I, section 14, of the Utah Constitution. First, if the roadblock cannot even be validated under the questionable “balancing” approach of Michigan v. Sitz, — U.S. —, 110 S.Ct. 2481, 110 L.Ed.2d 412 (1990), see, e.g., id. at 2490-99 (Stevens, J., dissenting), we have no need to examine whether it might be additionally invalid under the state constitution. Second, and more importantly, I am not enthusiastic about suggesting that the legislature, any more than the courts or the police, should be about the business of balancing away important constitutional protections that safeguard all of us so that law enforcement can more readily catch an occasional law-breaker. The citizen’s right to be free from police intrusion in the total absence of even the least suspicion of wrong-doing should simply not be at the mercy of the legislature’s determination of how tourism or our hopes for the Olympics might somehow be adversely impacted by one law enforcement technique or another.
If it were necessary to reach the state constitutional issue in this case, i.e., if the roadblock passed muster under the federal constitution, I would be more inclined to solidify long-standing constitutional precepts as at the core of article I, section 14, than to borrow the troublesome “balancing” approach embraced in Sitz, adopt some variation of that approach, and begin a journey down that nebulous path. Cf. State v. Larocco, 794 P.2d 460, 469 (Utah 1990) (state constitutional analysis employed “to simplify ... the search and seizure rules so that they can be more easily followed by the police and the courts and, at the same time, provide the public with consistent and predictable protection against unreasonable searches and seizures”). I would probably prefer to hold that the rule of Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968), uniformly applied by Utah courts, is a matter of Utah constitutional law that simply may not be balanced away by any branch of our government and that is not amenable to a roadblock exception.
Under established Utah decisional law, in the absence of any individualized suspicion, only a level one stop is permitted. E.g., State v. Jackson, 805 P.2d 765, 766 (Utah Ct.App.1990); State v. Menke, 787 P.2d 537, 570 (Utah Ct.App.1990); State v. Trujillo, 739 P.2d 85, 87-88 (Utah Ct.App.1987). A level one stop is a purely voluntary encounter. Id. And one does not lose *153the right to decline to participate in a level one encounter simply because one chooses to drive rather than to walk. See State v. Smith, 781 P.2d 879, 881 (Utah Ct.App.1989); State v. Johnson, 771 P.2d 326, 328 (Utah Ct.App.1989), rev’d on other grounds, 805 P.2d 761 (Utah 1991). See also, Delaware v. Prowse, 440 U.S. 648, 663, 99 S.Ct. 1391, 1401, 59 L.Ed.2d 660 (1979) (persons do not lose the protections of fourth amendment “when they step from the sidewalk into their automobiles”); State v. Talbot, 792 P.2d 489, 491, 494 (Utah Ct.App.1990).
If, as seems clear, the police cannot require every pedestrian on a stretch of sidewalk to stop and answer police inquiries, I am hard-pressed to see how they can stop every car on a stretch of the interstate highway and require the driver to answer inquiries. In my view, the only roadblock that is sure to pass state constitutional muster is one which would qualify as a level-one stop. Cf. Little v. State, 300 Md. 485, 479 A.2d 903, 906 (1989) (roadblock upheld where motorists avoiding roadblock or otherwise refusing to cooperate not detained). I see no constitutional problem with a roadside police checkpoint announced by a sign on the freeway, “Police Roadblock Next Exit. Your Cooperation in Answering Police Inquiries Appreciated.” Most drivers would stop, even though they could not be required to, just as most pedestrians will stop and respond to police inquiries on the sidewalk. But on neither medium of travel can one suspected of nothing illegal whatsoever be compelled to do so.