Just reading in my local paper about another sobriety checkpoint that netted 14 DUI’ers. While I am definitely not in favor of drunk drivers I am not all that enamoured with law inforcement trapping people and forcing them to prove they are NOT under the influence.
I don’t like the idea of being pulled over when I’m just minding my own business, not drinking, wearing my seatbelt, etc etc. And how do they determine said DUI’ers? Do they make every person take a breathalizer or field sobriety test? This doesn’t seem right either.
I guess it’s a fine line, but how is this legal to pull over and stop motorists that are not doing anything wrong traffic wise other than turning down the wrong street and getting stuck in a checkpoint??
I think central to the legality of DUI checkpoints in most areas is the concept that driving on public roads is a privilege, not a right. Laws prohibiting rights are unconstitutional, while laws putting conditions on privileges seem to have much more leeway to be strict.
If you check the case law, you will see that the Supreme Court has ruled that they are not an infringement of your rights, provided that the authorities follow certain guidelines. Among these are publicizing the checkpoint location in advance, allowing an alternate route, etc. They can’t just plop one down unannounced on a road with no exits and check everybody. “That’s profiling, and profiling is wrong!”
I think it’s important to realise that we often pay for priveleges. I pay for the privelege to post on this board, and for the privelege of electricity (from a Crown corporation). It’s rights that nobody should have to pay for.
Locally, during one of these stops (which had been announced for at least a week in advance):
Several DUI drivers were removed from the road.
One guy who had several outstanding warrants got caught when he tried to get out of the line of stopped cars and drive off (Note to criminals: your 20 year-old beater car cannot outrun a cop on a new Harley police motorcycle).
One stolen car was recovered.
I’ve only been in one of these stops. I was delayed about five minutes. A minor annoyance at worst.
I’m assuming that you mean Texas hasn’t authorized them. Were Texas to initiate such a program to catch drunk drivers, it would be legal under Michigan Department of State Police v. Sitz, which held that sobriety checkpoints were “reasonable” under the Fourth Amendment. The case was decided in 1990
So are the commercials I’ve been seeing here in Austin lately along the lines of “people don’t turn themselves in for drunk driving, so we need checkpoints if we want to get 'em” a campaign to change the law in Texas? I assumed they were meant as a public service announcement, to convey something like, “See, we HAVE to have these checkpoints, or we wouldn’t know people were driving drunk unless they did something!”
I get stopped at a roadblock, on average, about twice a year.* They check driver’s license, insurance papers, vehicle ownership, and I assume if they had any indication of DUI they’d get you for that at the same time. I’ve never seen one of these checkpoints announced in advance.
It appears the law covering checkpoints varies from state to state.
*There’s a long stretch of road through a pecan grove on my route to and from town, and the troopers like that shady place in the hot weather.
Note that Sitz was decided under the US Constitution. On remand, the Michigan courts held that the roadblock, although permissible under the Fourth Amendment, violated the Michigan Constitution and therefore was impermissible. Of course, because the case was decided on the basis of state law, further review by the SCOTUS was not possible. Here’s a brief syllabus of the Sitz case upon remand to the Michigan Supreme Court (decided 1993).
So Otto is correct that roadblocks to find drunk drivers do not violate the US Constitution, some states provide greater protections/rights than the US Constitution does. Texas apparently has never reached that question but, instead, has held that roadblocks are impermissible under Sitz because Texas has no statutory scheme authorizing them. The case is Holt v. State, 887 SW2d 16, 19 (Tex. Crim. App. 1994). I can’t find it online.
So, yes, the law can vary from state to state; the US Constitution is only a floor for our rights. HelloKitty, your discomfort with the notion that law enforcement can make a warrantless, suspicionless stop (without probable cause, or even reasonable suspicion that a crime has occurred) is precisely the reason the Michigan Supreme Court held that the roadblocks violated the Michigan Constitution’s analog to the Fourth Amendment.
I’d like to see a legal cite for this. There are plenty of perfectly legal restrictions on rights - for example, you can’t vote if you haven’t registered, and you can be required to vote at a certain location. As far as I can tell, “driving is a privilege, not a right” is a philosophical statement with no impact on law enforcement whatsoever.
I ran across one of these in Pennsylvania a couple years ago. Apparently stopping people without probable cause would in fact be legally dodgy in the Commnwealth, so the fiction (as announced by signs set up approaching the checkpoint) was that it was a DUI information checkpoint. You roll up, the cop hands you a brochure on the dangers of DUI, which just coincidently allows him to get close enough to smell your breath, and if he detects alcohol, voila, probable cause for a traffic stop.
The legality of random breath tests here (NSW) is made quite clear under statute. The Road Transport (Safety and Traffic Management) Act 1999 states quite clearly:
A police officer may require a person to undergo a breath test in accordance with the officer’s directions if the officer has reasonable cause to believe that the person:
(a) is or was driving a motor vehicle on a road or road related area; etc
I don’t understand how driving could be a privilige. The government owns the roads - public property. To allow me the right of driving. Everybody needs their freedom to travel, saying driving is a privilige not a right is like saying “air, it’s a privilige not a right”. They want to put tight controls on driving, have sobriety check points, etc. then make it fair - all driveable real estate should be always available for sale to private parties, because otherwise we have no recourse. If you don’t like public road rules, don’t drive on public roads - and that would be a fine principle to live by if there was a viable alternative, however, the government makes it actively impossible to run an independent commercial road network.
Constitutionally speaking, even if the supreme court routinely disagreed with me, sobriety check points are not constitutional if you can’t refuse the search and drive away without consequences. You have a right to be secure in your person, house, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures. A random search is not reasonable, because reason presumes cause, and random implies there isn’t one.
Exactly. There are limits on who may drive and under what circumstances, but anyone who meets those criteria will receive a driver’s license and be allowed to drive on public roads, unless and until his driving rights are revoked through due process of law. The same is true of voting, which is widely considered a right (right?).
A privilege, OTOH, is something that can be granted or revoked at someone else’s discretion. Dad can take away Junior’s TV privileges because Junior didn’t take out the trash, or because his grades fell, or even just because he’s in a bad mood, and then he can change his mind at any time for any reason.
So how come if checkpoints are published in advance is it not legal to turnaround when you see the checkpoint? You have not done anything wrong, you are just exercising the decision to turn around.
For me the problem come from the fact that a cop cannot stop you at random and search your car as that violates the fourth amendment, but they can stop you and breathalyze you at random. I don’t think it’s a slippery slope to apply this to another situation such as knocking on your door at random and giving a drug test.
But there is more to it than that. In California, the traffic cameras that catch red light runners have been determined to be illegal speed traps and if you go to court, the judge will throw out the ticket, but the DMV will still suspend your license for not paying the ticket. Let me repeat that: the DMV can take away your right (oops priviledge) to drive for not paying an illegally given ticket that a judge has dismissed.
In other words, there is no due process when it comes to drivers licenses.