Pubdate: Wed, 29 Nov 2000
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Copyright: 2000 The Washington Post Company
Contact:  1150 15th Street Northwest, Washington, DC 20071
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Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Author: Peter Slevin, Washington Post Staff Writer

DRUG ROADBLOCKS STRUCK DOWN

Police may not stop motorists randomly at roadblocks to search for drugs, 
the Supreme Court ruled yesterday in a 6 to 3 decision that rejected the 
tactics of Indianapolis law officers who set up checkpoints to cut 
narcotics traffic in high-crime neighborhoods.

The court, which has previously ruled that sobriety checkpoints are 
appropriate public safety measures, determined that drug search roadblocks 
are unconstitutional because they are specifically designed to catch 
criminals. As such, the justices said, they amounted to unreasonable 
seizures barred by the Fourth Amendment.

Law and precedent hold that police must have reasonable suspicion before 
they can stop and search a person or a car. If the Indiana roadblocks were 
permitted, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote for the majority in 
Indianapolis v. Edmond, "there would be little check on the authorities' 
ability to construct roadblocks for almost any conceivable law enforcement 
purpose."

And if the court did not set limits in this case, O'Connor continued, "the 
Fourth Amendment would do little to prevent such intrusions from becoming a 
routine part of American life."

Although the court is considered strongly pro-police on matters of criminal 
law, the Indianapolis decision heartened civil libertarians by reinforcing 
recent rulings that emphasized the right to privacy over a series of 
intrusive efforts by law enforcement to fight crime.

The court ruled unanimously earlier this year that police may not stop and 
frisk someone based on an anonymous tip that the person is carrying a gun. 
The court also declared that a Border Patrol agent was wrong to probe a bus 
passenger's duffel bag as he conducted a routine immigration search.

Brooklyn Law School professor Susan Herman said the decisions suggest "the 
court wants to hold the line and to recognize that there are rules."

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who supported the two earlier rulings, 
dissented in the Indianapolis case, joined by fellow conservatives Clarence 
Thomas and Antonin Scalia. Thomas signed on to the dissent but questioned 
the legality of any "indiscriminate stops of individuals not suspected of 
wrongdoing," an issue not addressed in this case.

Rehnquist wrote that the test for highway checkpoints is "whether they 
serve a significant state interest with minimal intrusion on motorists." He 
said the Indianapolis approach was reasonable, noting that most stops 
lasted less than three minutes and that no cars or drivers were searched 
unless a drug-sniffing dog reacted to a suspected illegal substance.

"These stops effectively serve the state's legitimate interests," Rehnquist 
wrote. "They are executed in a regularized and neutral manner. And they 
only minimally intrude upon the privacy of the motorists. They should 
therefore be constitutional."

A small number of other cities had employed similar roadblocks, but most 
had held off, awaiting the court's decision in this case.

In Indianapolis, Scott Chinn, who argued the case for the city, said the 
ruling was "not completely surprising." He maintained, however, that the 
checkpoints were the result of police work and neighborhood complaints and 
"were intended to be very neighborhood-friendly.

"You take a swipe, at least, at stopping the flow of this stuff in and out 
of neighborhoods," said Chinn, the city's corporation counsel. "The 
checkpoints were set up with specific reference to what the hot zones were 
in the city for drug arrests."

Six times in 1998, Indianapolis police set up roadway checkpoints in 
high-crime areas. They stopped cars and examined driver's licenses while 
drug-sniffing dogs circled the vehicles. During a three-month period, there 
were 1,161 police stops and 104 arrests. Fifty-five were for drug charges.

Two people stopped by the police but not arrested sued to halt the 
roadblocks on Fourth Amendment grounds, backed by the Indiana Civil 
Liberties Union. A trial court rejected their claim, but a Chicago appeals 
court declared the tactic unconstitutional last year, saying the approach 
"belongs to the genre of general programs of surveillance which invade 
privacy wholesale in order to discover evidence of crime."

O'Connor's opinion made a distinction between the Indianapolis case and 
earlier court decisions that upheld highway checkpoints for broader social 
benefit, such as policing the border or protecting motorists and 
pedestrians from drunken drivers.

In 1990, the court held that police can set up drunken-driving checkpoints 
on city streets as a public health and safety measure. The justices said 
sobriety stops were reasonable because the public good of making roads 
safer outweighed the brief invasion of a driver's privacy. The court ruled 
in 1983 that trained dogs can sniff travelers' luggage to detect narcotics.

"We have never approved a checkpoint program whose primary purpose was to 
detect evidence of ordinary criminal wrongdoing," O'Connor wrote. "Rather, 
our checkpoint cases have recognized only limited exceptions to the general 
rule that a seizure must be accompanied by some measure of individualized 
suspicion."

In another decision yesterday, the court ruled unanimously that a West 
Virginia coal company must abide by an arbitrator's decision to reinstate a 
truck driver who tested positive for marijuana use. The arbitrator had 
reviewed the case under terms of a union contract, and had ordered Eastern 
Associated Coal Corp. to return the man to work. The company refused, then 
sued in federal court, contending that reinstating the driver would 
jeopardize the safety of others.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote in Eastern Associated Coal Corp. v. United 
Mine Workers of America that reasonable people could disagree about whether 
reinstatement or firing would be the more correct solution, but both the 
employer and the United Mine Workers of America had agreed to let the 
arbitrator decide the issue.
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