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U.S. Supreme Court strikes down anti-drug roadblocks

By George Stuteville and Doug Sword

Indianapolis Star

November 29, 2000

WASHINGTON -- They pulled over the wrong guys.

Two years ago, Joell Palmer and James Edmond were swept up in roadblocks set up by Indianapolis police that used dogs to sniff for drugs inside cars.

Palmer and Edmond were clean. But Palmer said he drove away feeling like police had violated his rights.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed with him. In a split decision, the justices struck down the use of such roadblocks while at the same time upholding other forms of police-related traffic stops, including sobriety checkpoints.

Palmer's reaction when informed of the 6-3 ruling: "Yeah! Rock on!"

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, writing for the majority, said the Indianapolis roadblocks violated the constitutional rights of citizens because they were designed to find drug traffickers by using a systematic stop-and-search procedure.

Normally, police must have probable cause -- or a legally justifiable reason -- to stop a car and conduct such a search.

"We have never approved a checkpoint program whose primary purpose was to detect evidence of ordinary criminal wrongdoing," O'Connor wrote.

Dissenting were the court's three most conservative members: Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

In writing the dissent, Rehnquist ripped at the majority's decision.

"The Court's opinion today casts a shadow over what had been assumed...to be a perfectly lawful activity," the chief justice wrote.

The Indianapolis case, which was argued in October, was among several similar search-and-seizure issues the high court considered in what was interpreted as the court's attempt to add more definition to the Fourth Amendment. The amendment is designed to protect citizens from unreasonable searches by the government.

Civil rights lawyers, police and constitutional experts were watching the Indianapolis case especially closely because it could have allowed the court to delve into such prickly territory as racial profiling, privacy rights and how far law enforcement can go in waging the war on drugs.

But during oral arguments, O'Connor, who had been the most vocal of the justices, narrowed the issues to whether police could stop a number of innocent citizens as a way to make a few criminal arrests.

In six such roadblocks that occurred in 1998 before the procedure was halted, police made 104 arrests, including 55 for drug-related charges. But they had to stop 1,161 vehicles.

Two of those cars included Palmer's and Edmond's.

Palmer, then a long-haired 19-year-old in a souped-up car, pulled off the I-65 ramp south of Downtown into the middle of a police checkpoint. The only drug-related material in his car was a Libertarian Party brochure arguing its traditional position in favor of legalizing drugs.

But before he was released, Palmer said he had been ordered from his car and held while police dogs searched through the vehicle. One officer mockingly displayed the pamphlet to the other officers.

"They told me to get out of the car, and they held me on the back (of the car)," Palmer said. "I told the cop that I wasn't giving up my rights, and he said, 'You have no rights.' "

Edmond, who had a similar experience, went to the Indiana Civil Liberties Union. There, attorney Kenneth Falk took up their cause and the case.

Falk initially lost in U.S. District Court. But the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that decision, upholding Falk's argument that the roadblocks violated citizens' rights.

On Tuesday, Falk was researching another case and missed the phone call from Washington with the news that he had won in the nation's highest court.

"Obviously we are happy at the result. This decision really puts an end to the Fourth Amendment being further watered down," said Falk, explaining that there had been growing concern that privacy rights were being systematically eroded by increasing uses of police procedures to detect crimes.

O'Connor, further explaining the ruling, made it clear that it did not affect other high court decisions that have supported the use of roadblocks in other situations -- mostly as public-safety procedures to control drunken driving, to check for vehicles' roadworthiness and to protect the national border.

"Our checkpoint cases have recognized only limited exceptions to the general rule that a seizure must be accompanied by some measure of individualized suspicion," O'Connor wrote.

Scott Chinn, an attorney for the city, argued that the roadblocks were valid because they were little more than a sobriety checkpoint with the addition of drug-sniffing dogs. He had argued that the stops were brief, that strict procedures were used and that the stops were targeted in high-crime areas.

Rehnquist picked up Chinn's argument.

"Because these seizures serve the state's accepted and significant interest 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 drug sniff lengthens these otherwise legitimate seizures, I dissent," the chief justice wrote.

Chinn, who inherited the case from the Stephen Goldsmith administration, said the new administration of Mayor Bart Peterson was hoping to win the case -- not necessarily to reintroduce the stops, which were halted after the lawsuit was filed, but to have the procedure available if needed.

"I'm disappointed because we will lose one of our tools in the fight against drugs, and I don't think there is any greater scourge facing Indianapolis or our country," Peterson said.

Indianapolis Police Chief Jerry Barker was equally disappointed, saying the city is especially vulnerable to drug traffickers because of its central location in the state and nation.

The drug roadblocks were seen as an innovative tool to combat the narcotics flow through Indianapolis, where four interstate highways converge, he said.

"We have to attack this thing from as many different ways as we can," Barker said.

Marion County Prosecutor Scott Newman pointed out that the high court has upheld the constitutionality of drunken-driving roadblocks -- a procedure police used just last week during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

"That logic would seem to allow roadblocks in drug cases," he said. "But it seems that the justices are not comfortable with the slippery slope."

Similar drug checkpoints modeled after the Indianapolis roadblocks also were affected by the ruling.

Jim Pasco, executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police, said the ruling was impractical.

"My reaction is that it is akin to saying you can't search people for explosives at an airport using dogs or detection equipment," Pasco said. "At some point, public safety has to take precedence over some overreaching, tortured definition of civil rights."

In the end, plaintiff Palmer, who ran unsuccessfully for the Indiana House as a Libertarian candidate in November, was skeptical as to how long the decision would hold.

"The Supreme Court usually rules fair, but what's this really change?" he asked. "They'll just make up some other reason, find some loophole and still take our rights away."

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And look at who two of the dissenters were, Scalia and Thomas, the two Justices that Bush wants to appoint clones of to the court. So I have Gore who wants to give special rights to some people, and Bush who wants send people to the court who will take my rights away. Some choice huh?

-- Uncle Deedah (unkeed@yahoo.com), November 30, 2000

Answers

"Because these seizures serve the state's accepted and significant interest 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 drug sniff lengthens these otherwise legitimate seizures, I dissent," the chief justice wrote.

I think the Chief Justice doesn't go nearly far enough. Why not provide for DNA collection at these roadblocks.

"I'm disappointed because we will lose one of our tools in the fight against drugs, and I don't think there is any greater scourge facing Indianapolis or our country," Peterson said.

And surely we all recognize that the ends justify the means.

Sarcastic rant mode off.

-- David L (bumpkin@dnet.net), December 01, 2000.

Unc,

>So I have Gore who wants to give special rights to some people,

Will you please be more specific about "special rights" and "some people"?

-- No Spam Please (nos_pam_please@hotmail.com), December 01, 2000.

Spam,

I do not think that it is any secret that the Dems are far more involved in passing anti-discrimination laws. These laws favor the few who are able to get defined as needing special protection, and thus, special rights.

-- Uncle Deedah (unkeed@yahoo.com), December 02, 2000.