EXCERPTS FROM COURT'S OPINIONS ON ROADBLOCKS FOR DRUG
SEARCHES

WASHINGTON, Nov. 28 Following are excerpts from the Supreme Court's
decision today striking down police roadblocks for drug searches. The vote
in Indianapolis v. Edmund was 6 to 3. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote the
majority opinion; Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist wrote the dissent.

FROM THE DECISION By Justice O'Connor

We have never approved a checkpoint program whose primary purpose was to
detect evidence of ordinary criminal wrongdoing. 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. We
suggested in Prouse [v. Delaware] (1979) that we would not credit the
"general interest in crime control" as justification for a regime of
suspicionless stops. Consistent with this suggestion, each of the checkpoint
programs that we have approved was designed primarily to serve purposes
closely related to the problems of policing the border or the necessity of
ensuring roadway safety. Because the primary purpose of the Indianapolis
narcotics checkpoint program is to uncover evidence of ordinary criminal
wrongdoing, the program contravenes the Fourth Amendment.

Petitioners propose several ways in which the narcotics-detection purpose of
the instant checkpoint program may instead resemble the primary purposes of
the checkpoints in [Michigan v.] Sitz (1990) and [United States v.]
Martinez-Fuerte (1976). Petitioners state that the checkpoints in those
cases had the same ultimate purpose of arresting those suspected of
committing crimes. Securing the border and apprehending drunk drivers are,
of course, law enforcement activities, and law enforcement officers employ
arrests and criminal prosecutions in pursuit of these goals. If we were to
rest the case at this high level of generality, there would be little check
on the ability of the authorities to construct roadblocks for almost any
conceivable law enforcement purpose. Without drawing the line at roadblocks
designed primarily to serve the general interest in crime control, the
Fourth Amendment would do little to prevent such intrusions from becoming a
routine part of American life.

Petitioners also emphasize the severe and intractable nature of the drug
problem as justification for the checkpoint program. There is no doubt that
traffic in illegal narcotics creates social harms of the first magnitude.
The law enforcement problems that the drug trade creates likewise remain
daunting and complex, particularly in light of the myriad forms of spinoff
crime that it spawns. The same can be said of various other illegal
activities, if only to a lesser degree. But the gravity of the threat alone
cannot be dispositive of questions concerning what means law enforcement
officers may employ to pursue a given purpose. Rather, in determining
whether individualized suspicion is required, we must consider the nature of
the interests threatened and their connection to the particular law
enforcement practices at issue. We are particularly reluctant to recognize
exceptions to the general rule of individualized suspicion where
governmental authorities primarily pursue their general crime control ends.

Nor can the narcotics-interdiction purpose of the checkpoints be
rationalized in terms of a highway safety concern similar to that present in
Sitz. The detection and punishment of almost any criminal offense serves
broadly the safety of the community, and our streets would no doubt be safer
but for the scourge of illegal drugs. Only with respect to a smaller class
of offenses, however, is society confronted with the type of immediate,
vehicle-bound threat to life and limb that the sobriety checkpoint in Sitz
was designed to eliminate. . . .

The primary purpose of the Indianapolis narcotics checkpoints is in the end
to advance "the general interest in crime control." We decline to suspend
the usual requirement of individualized suspicion where the police seek to
employ a checkpoint primarily for the ordinary enterprise of investigating
crimes. We cannot sanction stops justified only by the generalized and ever
present possibility that interrogation and inspection may reveal that any
given motorist has committed some crime.

Of course, there are circumstances that may justify a law enforcement
checkpoint where the primary purpose would otherwise, but for some
emergency, relate to ordinary crime control. For example, as the Court of
Appeals noted, the Fourth Amendment would almost certainly permit an
appropriately tailored roadblock set up to thwart an imminent terrorist
attack or to catch a dangerous criminal who is likely to flee by way of a
particular route. . . .

Petitioners argue that our prior cases preclude an inquiry into the purposes
of the checkpoint program. For example, they cite Whren v. United States
(1996) and Bond v. United States (2000) to support the proposition that
"where the government articulates and pursues a legitimate interest for a
suspicionless stop, courts should not look behind that interest to determine
whether the government's `primary purpose' is valid." These cases, however,
do not control the instant situation.

In Whren, we held that an individual officer's subjective intentions are
irrelevant to the Fourth Amendment validity of a traffic stop that is
justified objectively by probable cause to believe that a traffic violation
has occurred. We observed that our prior cases "foreclose any argument that
the constitutional reasonableness of traffic stops depends on the actual
motivations of the individual officers involved." . . . Last term in Bond v.
United States (2000), we addressed the question whether a law enforcement
officer violated a reasonable expectation of privacy in conducting a tactile
examination of carry-on luggage in the overhead compartment of a bus. In
doing so, we simply noted that the principle of Whren rendered the
subjective intent of an officer irrelevant to this analysis. While, as
petitioners correctly observe, the analytical rubric of Bond was not
"ordinary, probable-cause Fourth Amendment analysis," nothing in Bond
suggests that we would extend the principle of Whren to all situations where
individualized suspicion was lacking. . . .

FROM THE DISSENT By Chief Justice Rehnquist

The state's use of a drug-sniffing dog, according to the court's holding,
annuls what is otherwise plainly constitutional under our Fourth Amendment
jurisprudence: brief, standardized, discretionless, roadblock seizures of
automobiles, seizures which effectively serve a weighty state interest with
only minimal intrusion on the privacy of their occupants. Because these
seizures serve the state's accepted and significant interests of preventing
drunken driving and checking for driver's licenses and vehicle
registrations, and because there is nothing in the record to indicate that
the addition of the dog sniff lengthens these otherwise legitimate seizures,
I dissent.

. . . Roadblock seizures are consistent with the Fourth Amendment if they
are "carried out pursuant to a plan embodying explicit, neutral limitations
on the conduct of individual officers." Specifically, the constitutionality
of a seizure turns upon "a weighing of the gravity of the public concerns
served by the seizure, the degree to which the seizure advances the public
interest, and the severity of the interference with individual liberty." . .