{"id":1970,"date":"2015-09-17T00:23:27","date_gmt":"2015-09-17T04:23:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dansdigitaldive.com\/web\/?p=1970"},"modified":"2015-09-15T14:48:21","modified_gmt":"2015-09-15T18:48:21","slug":"legalities-of-police-checkpoints","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dansdigitaldive.com\/web\/archives\/1970","title":{"rendered":"Legalities of police checkpoints"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"4\"<\/a>The other day, my cat and a co-worker of mine, Frank, were involved in casual conversation regarding personal rights and police checkpoints. They were discussing the legalities of DUI and other checkpoints.\u00a0 My cat loves a bit of brandy with his catnip – so he has some skin in the game.\u00a0 Last thing he needs is getting pulled over\u00a0 on his way to the litter box.\u00a0 Frank has no stance on drinking – his stance is purely a personal rights \/ constitutional law question.\u00a0 I believe the law is applicable to all type scenarios, and the legal precedences are valid.<\/p>\n

The question is, are DUI checkpoints legal.\u00a0 In a word – yes.\u00a0 While it is true that the Fourth Amendment<\/a> secures “the right of the people to be secure in their person, houses, papers, and affects against unreasonable<\/span><\/strong> searches and seizures” the Supreme Court has established precedence that DUI checkpoints are, in fact, legal.\u00a0 The case setting this precedence was the 1990 Supreme Court case: Michigan Dept of State Police vs. Sitz<\/a>. The State of Michigan was “balancing the state’s interest\u00a0 in preventing accidents caused by drunk drivers, the effectiveness of sobriety checkpoints in achieving that goal, and the level of intrusion on an individual’s privacy caused by the checkpoints.”<\/p>\n

In staying with the Supreme Courts decision, a “seizure” occurs when a vehicle is stopped at a checkpoint.\u00a0 The question comes into play, is that seizure reasonable?\u00a0 Because every vehicle is stopped, and checkpoints have common guidelines; the resulting intrusion is “constitutionally indistinguishable” from the stops upheld in Marinez-Fuerte<\/a>, which decided the legality of permanent checkpoints looking for illegal aliens.\u00a0 In this case the Supreme Court stated “Under the circumstances of these checkpoint stops, which do not involve searches, the Government or public interest in making such stops outweighs the constitutionally protected interest of the private citizen.”<\/p>\n

It’s that pesky little word “unreasonable” that creates the trouble.\u00a0 What is reasonable to one, may not be reasonable to another – and that, I think was the jist of Frank’s comments. Constitutional scholars (of which I am not one) fall into two camps regarding this word…<\/p>\n