Issaquah DUI Lawyer | DUI Roadblocks are Unconstitutional in Washington
A reader of the Issaquah DUI Lawyer blog submitted this question: Can the police set up roadblocks to stop drunk drivers?
This question is complicated because the answer varies state-by-state. Under the Washington State constitution, DUI roadblocks are unconstitutional. Police in Washington must have individualized suspicion to stop you — which means they can’t stop everyone just to “guess and check.” But, under the United States Constitution, DUI roadblocks are acceptable. This is yet another example of how the Washington State Constitution is more protective than the United States Constitution. See below for the United States Supreme Court reasoning on this point. The nine other states where DUI checkpoints are unconstitutional are Rhode Island, Iowa, Minnesota, Michigan, Oregon, Texas, Wyoming, Wisconsin and Idaho.
This question was raised in the United States Supreme Court case of Michigan v. Sitz 496 U.S. 444 (1990),where the USSC held that roadblocks were constitutionally permissible.
Chief Justice Rehnquist began his majority opinion by admitting that DUI roadblocks (aka “sobriety checkpoints”) do, in fact, constitute a “seizure” within the language of the 4th Amendment. In other words, yes, it’s a blatant violation of the Constitution. BUT….
The roadblock is only a “minor violation”, and there’s all this “carnage” on the highways MADD tells us we’ve got to do something about. The “minimal intrusion on individual liberties”, Rehnquist wrote, must be “weighed” against the need for and effectiveness of roadblocks. In other words, the ends justify the (illegal) means. This is known as the “DUI exception to the Constitution.”
The dissenting justices pointed out that the Constitution doesn’t make exceptions: The sole question is whether the police had probable cause to stop the individual driver. As Justice Brennan wrote, “That stopping every car might make it easier to prevent drunken driving…is an insufficient justification for abandoning the requirement of individualized suspicion.” Brennan concluded by noting that “The most disturbing aspect of the Court’s decision today is that it appears to give no weight to the citizen’s interest in freedom from suspicionless investigatory seizures”.
Rehnquist’s justification for ignoring the Constitution rested on the assumption that DUI roadblocks were “necessary” and “effective”. Are they? As Justice Stevens wrote in his own dissenting opinion, the Michigan court had already reviewed the statistics on DUI sobriety checkpoints/roadblocks:
“The findings of the trial court, based on an extensive record and affirmed by the Michigan Court of Appeals, indicate that the net effect of sobriety checkpoints on traffic safety is infinitesimal and possibly negative”.
If you have further questions about your own case or about DUI law in general, please contact this Issaquah Criminal Lawyer.
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