CHECKPOINTS FOR DRUGS UNCONSTITUTIONAL

U.S. Supreme Court Strikes Down Roadblocks For Drug Searches

WASHINGTON, D.C. - In a significant ruling on the use of police
power, the Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down random roadblocks
intended for drug searches, saying they are an unreasonable invasion
of privacy under the Constitution.

Law enforcement in and of itself is not a good enough reason to stop
innocent motorists, the majority concluded Tuesday in the first major
ruling of the new term.

"Because the checkpoint program's primary purpose is indistinguishable
from the general interest in crime control, the checkpoints
contravened the Fourth Amendment," which protects against unreasonable
searches and seizures, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote.

The decision isn't expected to cause any major ripples in local law
enforcement groups because drug search roadblocks are not overly
common in the area.

Cook County Sheriff's Police conduct random roadblock checks of
motorists for drunken driving offenses, but not to search for drugs,
according to department spokeswoman Penny Mateck.

No major changes are planned because the Supreme Court has already
ruled DUI stops were constitutional.

"If we come up with drugs during the course of the stop, then we will
prosecute that," Mateck said. "Our focus is DUI roadblocks."

The sheriff's department is perhaps one of the busiest police agencies
with roadblocks, conducting nearly 20 random DUI searches so far this
year. From those, 72 drunken driving arrests have been made.

"We consider that very successful," Mateck said.

The Supreme Court's three most conservative justices dissented, saying
the roadblocks Indianapolis set up in high-crime neighborhoods served
valuable public safety and crime-fighting goals. Chief Justice William
Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented.

"Efforts to enforce the law on public highways used by millions of
motorists are obviously necessary to our society," Rehnquist wrote.
"The court's opinion today casts a shadow over what has been assumed
... to be a perfectly lawful activity."

Thomas joined the entire nine-page dissent. Scalia agreed with
Rehnquist only in part.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, like O'Connor a sometime "swing vote" between
the court's ideological poles, sided with her in the majority.

The American Civil Liberties Union had sued on behalf of two detained
motorists, and the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago
eventually found the practice was probably unconstitutional.

"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," said Steven Shapiro, ACLU's legal director.

O'Connor stressed that the high court ruling does not affect other
police roadblocks such as border checks and drunken-driving
checkpoints, which have already been found constitutional.

But the reasoning behind those kinds of roadblocks -- chiefly that the
benefit to the public outweighs the inconvenience -- cannot be applied
broadly, O'Connor wrote.

"If this case were to rest on such a high level of generality, there
would be little check on the authorities' ability to construct
roadblocks for almost any conceivable law enforcement purpose," the
opinion said.

During oral arguments in October, several justices seemed troubled by
the notion that by unwittingly driving into the checkpoint, a motorist
is open to a criminal investigation that presumably would not have
happened otherwise.

Others questioned whether the use of drug-sniffing dogs was
heavy-handed. The dogs were led around the car's exterior at every
stop.

The case is one of several the court has taken recently that examine
the limits of police powers to hunt for drugs.

- --The court heard arguments in the case of a man detained by police
outside his home for about two hours while officers got a search
warrant for drugs. In that case, justices seemed to indicate by their
questions that they saw little wrong with the police approach.

- --The justices will also consider a case involving a man arrested for
growing marijuana after police outside the home monitored heat
generated by grow lamps in his garage.

- -- In 1999, the court ruled that immigration officials violated bus
passengers' privacy rights by squeezing the luggage in overhead racks
in a search for drugs.

In the Indianapolis case, lawyers for the city said catching drug
criminals was the primary aim of the roadblocks set up in the summer
of 1998. The city conceded the roadblocks detained far more innocent
motorists than criminals, but contended the checks were a quick and
efficient way to hunt for illegal drugs and that the severity of the
drug problem in some areas justified the searches.

While agreeing that society would no doubt be safer without illegal
drugs, O'Connor said "the gravity of the threat alone" cannot
determine whether the program was constitutional.

Similarly, the majority rejected the idea that the checkpoints could
also help catch drunks and drivers without valid licenses or
registrations.

Under that justification, O'Connor wrote, "authorities would be able
to establish checkpoints for virtually any purpose so long as they
also included a license or sobriety check."

The city conducted six roadblocks over four months in 1998 before the
practice was challenged in federal court.

Police stopped 1,161 cars and trucks at random and made 104 arrests,
55 of them on drug charges.

Several other cities have used similar checkpoints, but others held
off to see how the Supreme Court would rule on Indianapolis.