LICENSE-CHECK ROADBLOCKS PLACED ON HOLD

A decision by the Tennessee Supreme Court has raised serious questions as
to the constitutionality of driver's license roadblocks by the state
Highway Patrol.

''In light of this decision, we have made the decision to temporarily
discontinue license-check roadblocks while our legal staff has a chance to
review the opinion,'' state Department of Safety spokeswoman Dana Keeton said.

The ruling was handed down Tuesday, but safety officials were only
beginning to study it yesterday because their attention earlier had been
pre-empted by this week's attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C.

The state Supreme Court's decision reversed a ruling by the state Criminal
Court of Appeals, which had overturned an earlier Hamilton County Circuit
Court decision.

The case in question involved a 1997 Hamilton County arrest in which a man
was stopped at a roadblock conducted by two THP officers, the Chattanooga
Police Department and the Red Bank Police Department.

One of the Red Bank officers said he smelled marijuana from a vehicle
driven by Larry A. Hicks. A drug-sniffing dog alerted his handler, a
Chattanooga policeman, that drugs were present in the vehicle.

Hicks was arrested and during a search of his car authorities said they
found 5 pounds of marijuana. Following his arrest, an attorney for Hicks
moved to suppress the drug discovery, alleging the stop was unreasonable
and ''represented an arbitrary intrusion into (Hicks') reasonable
expectation of privacy.''

The high court agreed, citing three reasons.

In an majority opinion, written by Justice William M. Barker, four of the
five state justices said the state failed to ''demonstrate a sufficiently
compelling state interest to justify suspicion-less stops to check driver's
licenses.''

Secondly, the opinion stated the state did not show that roadblocks are
''sufficiently productive'' to qualify them as ''a reasonable enforcement
practice.''

Lastly, the majority of the justices found ''the operation of this
roadblock was not conducted according to predetermined operational
guidelines or with adequate supervisory authority.''

Under state law, only the Tennessee Highway Patrol has the authority to
arbitrarily stop a vehicle to ask for a license check, Keeton said.

During the stop in question, it was the officers from the Red Bank and
Chattanooga police departments who stopped Hicks' car and arrested him. The
state troopers, according to the opinion, did not participate directly in
the arrest of the defendant.

Chief Justice Frank Drowota wrote a dissenting opinion.

Keeton said state troopers held 2,614 license check roadblocks in 2000. She
noted that sobriety checkpoints are not affected by the court ruling and
will not be curtailed by the Department of Safety.