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.