Tuesday November 28 2:40 PM ET
Supreme Court Strikes Down Drug Roadblocks

By James Vicini

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites)
on Tuesday declared unconstitutional police roadblocks set up to catch drug
offenders, ruling they violate privacy rights of innocent motorists.

In an important victory for advocates of civil liberties, the high court by a 6-3
vote ruled against Indianapolis, where police had erected the roadblocks to
stop all motorists in an effort to halt the flow of illegal drugs through the city.

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor declared for the court majority that the drug
checkpoints violated the constitutional guarantees under the Fourth
Amendment protecting against unreasonable searches and seizures of
evidence.

O'Connor said the ruling does not affect other roadblocks, which the court
has previously held to be constitutional, to detect drunken drivers and to
intercept illegal immigrants being smuggled across the U.S. border by car.

She said the court in the past has suggested a roadblock to verify drivers'
licenses and registrations would be permissible to serve a highway safety
interest.

In the Indianapolis roadblocks, officers check licenses and vehicle
registrations, examine motorists for any signs of drug or alcohol impairment
and a drug-sniffing dog walks around the outside of each stopped car to
detect illegal narcotics.

The city sought to operate the checkpoints so that no motorist was stopped
for more than five minutes. In six roadblocks between August and November
1998, more than 1,100 vehicles were stopped and 104 motorists were
arrested -- half for drug offenses and half on other charges.

O'Connor wrote in the 15-page opinion that the court has never approved a
checkpoint program whose primary purpose was to detect evidence of
ordinary criminal wrongdoing.

If the high level of generality used to justify the drug roadblocks was
sufficient, there would be little check on the police to construct roadblocks
for almost any conceivable purpose, she said.

Drug Problem Does Not Justify Checkpoints

Further, the checkpoint program was not justified by the severe, intractable
nature of the drug program, O'Connor said.

If the program were justified by its secondary purpose of keeping impaired
motorists off the road and verifying licenses and registrations, then authorities
would be able to establish checkpoints for virtually any purpose, she said.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which challenged the drug roadblocks,
hailed the ruling.

``Today's decision sends a clear message that even a conservative court is
not willing to countenance the serious erosion of our basic constitutional rights
in the name of the war on drugs,'' said Steven Shapiro, the group's national
legal director.

Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin
Scalia, the court's most conservative members, dissented.

``These stops effectively serve the state's legitimate interests; they are
executed in a regularized and neutral manner; and they only minimally intrude
upon the privacy of motorists,'' Rehnquist wrote.

He said the program complied with prior high court rulings allowing
roadblock seizures of automobiles and the addition of a dog sniff did not add
to the length or intrusion of the stop.

Rehnquist expressed concern that sobriety and immigration roadblocks ``may
now be challenged on the grounds that they have some concealed forbidden
purpose.''

Justice Clarence Thomas said the previous rulings on sobriety and
immigration roadblocks compelled the upholding of the drug checkpoints.

But Thomas questioned whether the prior rulings should be overturned. He
said he doubted whether the authors of the Constitution considered
``reasonable'' a program of indiscriminate stops of individuals not suspected
of wrongdoing.

SOURCE:
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20001128/ts/court_roadblocks_dc_4.html

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Friends,

It is very interesting that the US Supreme Court has ruled that
roadblocks to check for drugs are unconstitutional but did not
rule roadblocks for other reasons are unconstitutional. I agree
with Justice Thomas that previous rulings should be reversed
and all roadblocks declared unconstitutional. Otherwise, this
latest ruling lacks any logic. Why should searches for illegal
drugs be unconstitutional while searches for legal items be
constitutional? This makes absolutely no sense.

Jim Hardin

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