Court Opinion

ID: 9534749
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:42:36.405757+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:31:45.779310
License: Public Domain

Justice QUINN
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent. In my view, the suspicionless seizure of a motorist during a highway sobriety checkpoint program violates the Search and Seizure clause of the Colorado Constitution, Colo. Const, art. II, § 7, because the seizure itself is totally unsupported by even a minimal level of individualized suspicion that the motorist was operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of, or while impaired by, intoxicating liquor.
Although the checkpoint program at issue here resulted in a proportionately greater number of arrests for driving while intoxicated than the program in People v. Rister, 803 P.2d 483 (Colo.1990), this difference, as the majority notes, should not be a constitutionally significant factor in determining the validity of the seizure under the Colorado Constitution. Maj. op. at 511. The majority, however, does place constitutionally significant importance on the fact that the checkpoint program in the instant case resulted in a considerably reduced average period of detention for motorists and thus constituted a “factor weighing in favor of the reasonableness of the stops.” Maj. op. at 511-12. I disagree with the majority’s attribution of constitutional significance to that factor.
Until this court's decision in Rister, the constitutional validity of intrusions into personal privacy and security under the Colorado Constitution did not turn on either the results obtained by the intrusion or the period of time during which the individual was subjected to the intrusion. Rather, Colorado case law consistently required three conditions for a temporary seizure of the person: (1) the law enforcement officer effecting the seizure must have had a specific and articulable basis in fact for suspecting that the person has engaged in criminal activity, was committing a crime, or was about to do so; (2) the purpose of the temporary seizure must have been reasonable; and (3) the scope and character of the intrusion must have been reasonably related to its purpose. E.g. People v. Wilson, 784 P.2d 325, 327 (Colo.1989); People v. Ratcliff, 778 P.2d 1371, 1376 (Colo.1989); People v. Melgosa, 753 P.2d 221, 225 (Colo.1988); People v. Carlson, 677 P.2d 310, 315 (Colo.1984); People v. Thomas, 660 P.2d 1272, 1274 (Colo.1983); People v. Tate, 657 P.2d 955, 958 (Colo.1983); People v. Schreyer, 640 P.2d 1147, 1149 (Colo.1982); People v. Casias, 193 Colo. 66, 72-77, 563 P.2d 926, 931-34 (1977); Stone v. People, 174 Colo. 504, 509, 485 P.2d 495, 497 (1971). As I emphasized in my dissenting opinion in Ris-ter, this three-part standard “was developed with a conscious regard for the privacy interests of Colorado citizens under the Colorado Constitution.” Dissenting op. 803 P.2d at 495.
I view today’s decision and this court’s recent opinion in Rister as going a long way toward approving suspicionless stops and temporary seizures of persons on the sole basis that such intrusions are brief in duration and are pursuant to a governmental initiated program calculated to deter or prevent certain forms of criminal conduct. No one doubts that stopping every pedes*514trian at selected locations in high crime areas of a city, and simultaneously making a cursory examination of their physical characteristics and frisking their outer clothing as a safety measure during the detention, probably would result in the seizure of drugs and other contraband and might even result in reducing drug abuse and other criminal activity in our society. However, the constitutional jurisprudence of our state, at least prior to this court’s decision in Rister, ascribed a value to personal privacy and security that was irreconcilable with the notion that a court could legitimatize a suspicionless temporary seizure of a person “solely on the basis of balancing the gravity of the public interest against the severity of the intrusion associated with the seizure.” Rister, dissenting op. at 496.
The statutory law of this state also echoes the salutary pre-Rister principle that a police officer must have an individualized suspicion of criminal activity in order to temporarily stop and detain a person for a brief investigation of the person’s activity. Specifically, section 42-4-1202.1, 17 C.R.S. (1984), requires reasonable suspicion that a motorist is or has been driving under the influence of, or driving while ability impaired by, intoxicating liquor before a law enforcement officer may stop the motorist and “require him to give his name, his address, and an explanation of his actions.” See also § 16-3-103(1), 8A C.R.S. (1986) (reasonable suspicion of criminal activity required before police officer may stop a person and require a person to give his name, address, identification if available, and an explanation of actions); § 42-2-113(1), 17 C.R.S. (1990 Supp.) (officer must have reasonable suspicion that motorist violated traffic laws before stopping motorist and requiring motorist to hand over driver’s license). The majority declines to find any significance in the “reasonable suspicion” requirement of section 42-4-1202.1 by characterizing that statute as “a statute of empowerment rather than of strict limitation on the authority of the police to make individual stops.” Maj. op. at 512. While section 42-4-1202.1 clearly is a statute of “empowerment,” the empowerment has its source in the state constitutional principle of reasonable individualized suspicion.
To authorize a stop and investigative detention of a motorist on anything less than reasonable individualized suspicion renders illusory a person’s right to personal privacy and security emanating from article II, section 7 of the Colorado Constitution and mirrored in both this court’s prior decisional law and the positive law enacted by the General Assembly. I would accordingly construe the Search and Seizure clause of the Colorado Constitution in a manner that vests a motorist on a public highway with the right to proceed to his or her destination without being required to submit to the seizure of his or her person, and associated questioning and observation of physical characteristics for evidence of intoxication, when there is a total absence of any cause whatever to suspect the motorist of drunken driving. I accordingly dissent and would reverse the judgment of the district court.
LOHR, J., joins in this dissent.