COURT STRIKES DOWN DRUG CHECKPOINTS

WASHINGTON -- A divided Supreme Court on Monday struck down as
unconstitutional random roadblocks intended to catch drug criminals. The
court's most conservative justices dissented.

The 6-3 ruling weighed privacy rights against the interests of law
enforcement. The majority found that Indianapolis' use of drug-sniffing dogs
to check all cars pulled over at the roadblocks was an unreasonable search
under the Constitution.

The majority, in an opinion written by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, said the
ruling does not affect other kinds of police roadblocks such as border
checks and drunken-driving checkpoints. Those 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.

Lawyers for Indianapolis conceded that the roadblocks erected there in 1998
detained far more innocent motorists than criminals.

The city said its primary aim was to catch drug criminals. Civil liberties
advocates called the practice heavy-handed and risky, and asked the Supreme
Court to ban it.

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

The court was not swayed by the argument that the severity of the drug
problem in some city neighborhoods justified the searches.

"While we do not limit the purposes that may justify a checkpoint program to
any rigid set of categories, we decline to approve a program whose primary
purpose is ultimately indistinguishable from the general interest in crime
control," the majority opinion said.

Cars were pulled over at random in high-crime neighborhoods in Indianapolis,
motorists questioned, and a drug-sniffing dog led around the cars. Most
motorists were detained for about three minutes.

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 and made 104 arrests. Fifty-five of the
arrests were on drug charges.