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Police Roadblocks to Probe Crime Allowed by Court
Wed Jan 14 14:34:45 2004
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Police Roadblocks to Probe Crime Allowed by Court (Update1)

Jan. 13 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Supreme Court expanded police authority to set up traffic checkpoints, saying officers can use roadblocks to ask motorists for information about a recent crime.

The justices upheld a 1997 roadblock in a Chicago suburb to seek witnesses to a fatal hit-and-run accident that occurred at the location a week earlier. The checkpoint didn't violate the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable seizures, the court said.

``The Fourth Amendment does not treat a motorist's car as his castle,'' Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote in a portion of the opinion joined by all nine justices on the court. ``Special law enforcement concerns will sometimes justify highway stops without individualized suspicion.''

Though the Fourth Amendment generally requires individual suspicion of wrongdoing before officers can stop a motorist, the Supreme Court has approved roadblocks for other special reasons, such as to catch illegal immigrants or get drunken drivers off the road. On the other hand, the court struck down an Indianapolis roadblock by police who used dogs to sniff cars for illegal drugs.

Breyer said the information-seeking checkpoint in Lombard, Illinois, was different from the one in which police looked for illegal drugs.

Seeking Information

The Lombard checkpoint didn't seek motorists who may have committed a crime, Breyer said. Instead, police were asking people ``as members of the public, for their help in providing information about a crime in all likelihood committed by others,'' the justice said.

His opinion was joined in full by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas.

Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg said they agreed that the legality of the information- seeking roadblock wasn't governed by the Indianapolis case involving the drug-sniffing dogs.

Still, the three said the case should be returned to a lower court for an initial decision on whether the roadblock in Lombard met the standards set today by the Supreme Court.

The roadblock in today's case was challenged by a motorist who was arrested at the checkpoint and later convicted of drunken driving unrelated to the hit-and-run being investigated by police.

Fatal Hit-and-Run

Police set up the checkpoint in Lombard in August 1997 a week after a fatal hit-and-run accident occurred at the location at the same time of day. Each car was stopped for about 10 or 15 seconds as police handed out flyers and asked motorists if they were in the area at the time of the accident.

Motorist Robert S. Lidster was arrested after police said he showed signs of drunken driving. The Illinois Supreme Court threw out his conviction, saying the roadblock was unconstitutional. City streets would be ``adorned with roadblocks'' if police could set them up to investigate every serious crime, the state court said.

The Supreme Court reversed that decision.

During arguments in the case in November, a U.S. Justice Department lawyer said federal authorities have used roadblocks in cases including the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping. The Utah teenager was abducted in 2002 and reunited with her family nine months later. A couple was charged with her kidnapping.

The case decided today is Illinois v. Lidster, 02-1060.