The Supreme Court yesterday upheld the use of random roadblocks by police to track suspected criminals, saying limited checkpoints do not violate the constitutional or privacy rights of motorists.
In a 6-3 decision, the high court overturned an Illinois Supreme Court ruling that said the 1997 alcohol-related arrest of a motorist at a roadblock set up by police to collect tips about a hit-and-run driver violated the man’s Fourth Amendment guarantee against illegal search and seizure.
Yesterday’s decision was a victory for police authorities in Illinois and 14 other states, along with the Justice Department, which had asked the Supreme Court to use the case to clarify how far police agencies could go in seeking information about suspected criminals.
Justice Stephen G. Breyer, in writing for the majority, said Illinois police had “appropriately tailored their checkpoint stops to fit important criminal investigatory needs.” He said that while the ruling was not a blanket approval of a new wide range of police searches, constitutional guarantees against illegal search and seizure do not treat “a motorist’s car as his castle.”
Justice Breyer said short stops — “a very few minutes at most” — were not too intrusive on motorists and that police may hand out fliers or ask drivers to volunteer information about crimes. He noted that in the Illinois case, police were investigating a specific crime, and one that resulted in a death.
Also voting in the majority were 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 disagreed, saying the ruling could open up motorists to police interference without yielding information about crimes.
“There is a valid and important distinction” between seizing a person to determine whether he or she has committed a crime and seizing a person to ask whether that person “has any information about an unknown person who committed a crime a week earlier,” Justice Stevens wrote in the minority opinion.
They said the case should have been sent back to Illinois courts for more consideration.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which argued in a friend-of-the-court brief that stopping motorists to gather information without any suspicion was contrary to constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure, did not return calls yesterday for comment.
Similar roadblocks were used by federal, state and local law enforcement authorities during the search for the so-called D.C. snipers during a 23-day reign of terror in October 2002.
In the Illinois case, police in Lombard, Ill., a Chicago suburb, had set up a roadblock in August 1997 to try to find information about a hit-and-run accident that occurred at the same spot a week earlier. Police hoped to find motorists who had been in the area and might have information about the accident. They stopped each vehicle and asked drivers questions that took about 10 to 15 seconds.
Robert Lidster was stopped and questioned at the roadblock. While speaking with him, officers smelled alcohol on his breath and noticed that his speech was slurred. Mr. Lidster then was asked to complete several sobriety tests. Police said he failed those tests, and he was arrested and later convicted of driving under the influence of alcohol.
Mr. Lidster appealed his conviction, claiming the roadblock arrest was unconstitutional. An Illinois appeals court agreed, saying a roadblock violated constitutional guarantees if its only purpose was to uncover “ordinary criminal wrongdoing.”
The appeals court reversed the conviction, holding that the roadblock violated Mr. Lidster’s Fourth Amendment guarantees. The Illinois Supreme Court later upheld the appeals court opinion in a 4-3 decision.
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