Facts
Just after midnight, on August 23, 1997, a 70-year-old man riding a bicycle was killed when a passing car struck him while he was riding on a highway in Lombard, Illinois. A week later, at the same time of day and at the same location, the police erected a roadblock. They stopped each passing motorist and handed him or her a flyer asking for information about the hit-and-run incident.
Robert Lidster approached the checkpoint in his minivan. Before he reached the designated stopping point, Lidster swerved and nearly struck one of the officers. The officer smelled alcohol on Lidster's breath and directed Lidster to a side street where another officer administered field sobriety tests. Lidster was later tried and convicted of driving under the influence of alcohol.
Lidster challenged the lawfulness of his arrest, arguing that the checkpoint violated the Fourth Amendment. The trial court rejected the challenge, but the Illinois Appellate Court accepted it, as did the Illinois Supreme Court. Because a decision of the Virginia Supreme Court had reached the opposite conclusion, the US Supreme Court agreed to hear Lidster's case.
Majority opinion
In City of Indianapolis v. Edmond , 531 U.S. 32 (2000), the US Supreme Court ruled that police checkpoints set up for the purpose of "general crime control" were unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment. Although the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that Edmond required the trial court to suppress the evidence of Lidster's stop, the Court disagreed.
Unlike the checkpoint in Edmond, the "primary law enforcement purpose" of the stop in this case was to "ask vehicle occupants, as members of the public, for their help in providing information about a crime in all likelihood committed by others." Edmond was directed solely at roadblocks whose purpose was general crime control; however, not every activity undertaken by law enforcement falls under the rubric of general crime control. Ordinarily, a brief investigatory stop requires individualized suspicion. In the case of seeking information from the public, the Court reasoned, "the concept of individualized suspicion has little role to play. Like certain other forms of police activity, say, crowd control or public safety, an information-seeking stop is not the kind of event that involves suspicion, or lack of suspicion, of the relevant individual."
The law allows the police to seek the voluntary cooperation of members of the public in investigating crime. The importance of doing so is "offset to some degree by the need to stop a motorist to obtain that help—a need less likely present where a pedestrian, not a motorist, is involved." Although such a stop is a "seizure" in Fourth Amendment terms, it is a reasonable one. The stop is hardly more onerous than ordinary traffic congestion, and the resulting cooperation with the investigation would prove just as fruitful as stopping pedestrians on the street. Accordingly, it would be "anomalous" to allow the police to stop pedestrians and ask for their help in solving crimes but forbid them to stop motorists for the same reason.
The Court stressed that this does not mean that the roadblock in this case was presumptively constitutional. Each roadblock must be evaluated on its own merits. In this case, the "relevant public concern was grave" in that the police were "investigating a crime that resulted in a human death." The roadblock advanced the police's "grave public concern," but it "interfered only minimally with liberty of the sort the Fourth Amendment seeks to protect." The stops were relatively short in duration. They "provided little reason for anxiety or alarm" on the part of the motorists, and there was no indication that the police acted in a discriminatory manner. Thus, the checkpoint stop was constitutional.
The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. It prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. In addition, it sets requirements for issuing warrants: warrants must be issued by a judge or magistrate, justified by probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and must particularly describe the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.
In United States criminal law, probable cause is the standard by which police authorities have reason to obtain a warrant for the arrest of a suspected criminal or the issuing of a search warrant. It is also the standard by which grand juries issue criminal indictments. The principle behind the standard is to limit the power of authorities to perform random or abusive searches, and to promote lawful evidence gathering and procedural form during criminal arrest and prosecution. The standard also applies to personal or property searches.
Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of Nevada, 542 U.S. 177 (2004), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that statutes requiring suspects to disclose their names during a police Terry stop did not violate the Fourth Amendment if the statute first required reasonable and articulable suspicion of criminal involvement. Under the rubric of Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968), the minimal intrusion on a suspect's privacy, and the legitimate need of law enforcement officers to quickly dispel suspicion that an individual is engaged in criminal activity, justified requiring a suspect to disclose his or her name.
Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Court ruled that the Fourth Amendment's prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures is not violated when a police officer stops a suspect on the street and frisks him or her without probable cause to arrest, if the police officer has a reasonable suspicion that the person has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime and has a reasonable belief that the person "may be armed and presently dangerous."
A Terry stop in the United States allows the police to briefly detain a person based on reasonable suspicion of involvement in criminal activity. Reasonable suspicion is a lower standard than probable cause which is needed for arrest. When police stop and search a pedestrian, this is commonly known as a stop and frisk. When police stop an automobile, this is known as a traffic stop. If the police stop a motor vehicle on minor infringements in order to investigate other suspected criminal activity, this is known as a pretextual stop. Additional rules apply to stops that occur on a bus.
A traffic stop, commonly called being pulled over, is a temporary detention of a driver of a vehicle by police to investigate a possible crime or minor violation of law.
United States v. Place, 462 U.S. 696 (1983), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States which held that a sniff of luggage in a public place, by a police dog specially trained to detect the odor of narcotics, was not a "search" under the meaning of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Court reasoned that the sniff of a dog is sui generis, intended to disclose only the presence or absence of narcotics. Because a dog sniff is such a limited test, the Court carved out this exception from the broad category of "searches" for which a warrant is generally required.
Reasonable suspicion is a legal standard of proof in United States law that is less than probable cause, the legal standard for arrests and warrants, but more than an "inchoate and unparticularized suspicion or 'hunch'"; it must be based on "specific and articulable facts", "taken together with rational inferences from those facts", and the suspicion must be associated with the specific individual. If police additionally have reasonable suspicion that a person so detained is armed and dangerous, they may "frisk" the person for weapons, but not for contraband like drugs. However, if the police develop probable cause during a weapons frisk, they can then search you. Reasonable suspicion is evaluated using the "reasonable person" or "reasonable officer" standard, in which said person in the same circumstances could reasonably suspect a person has been, is, or is about to be engaged in criminal activity; it depends upon the totality of circumstances, and can result from a combination of particular facts, even if each is individually innocuous.
City of Indianapolis v. Edmond, 531 U.S. 32 (2000), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States limited the power of law enforcement to conduct suspicionless searches, specifically, using drug-sniffing dogs at roadblocks. Previous Supreme Court decisions had given the police power to create roadblocks for the purposes of border security, and removing drunk drivers from the road. This decision stated that the power was limited to situations in which the search was "designed to serve special needs, beyond the normal need for law enforcement."
Illinois v. Caballes, 543 U.S. 405 (2005), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the Fourth Amendment is not violated when the use of a drug-sniffing dog during a routine traffic stop does not unreasonably prolong the length of the stop.
Consent searches are searches made by police officers in the United States based on the voluntary consent of the individual whose person or property is being searched. The simplest and most common type of warrantless searches in the United States are searches based upon consent. No warrant, probable cause or reasonable suspicion is required to perform a search if a person, or someone else with the proper authority, consents to a search.
A random checkpoint is a military and police tactic. In a military context, checkpoints involve the setup of a hasty roadblock by mobile truck- or armored vehicle-mounted infantry to disrupt unauthorized or unwanted movement or military activity and to check for valid identification and search for contraband, fugitives, or weapons that are not permitted in civilian hands. Random checkpoints are set up to achieve surprise, as opposed to known permanently located checkpoints, which suspects could circumvent. They are often established in locations where they cannot be observed by approaching traffic until it is too late to withdraw and escape without being observed.
Brendlin v. California, 551 U.S. 249 (2007), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that held that all occupants of a car are "seized" for purposes of the Fourth Amendment during a traffic stop, not just the driver.
Michigan Dept. of State Police v. Sitz, 496 U.S. 444 (1990), was a United States Supreme Court case involving the constitutionality of police sobriety checkpoints. The Court held 6-3 that these checkpoints met the Fourth Amendment standard of "reasonable search and seizure."
United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U.S. 543 (1976), was a decision of the United States Supreme Court that allowed the United States Border Patrol to set up permanent or fixed checkpoints on public highways leading to or away from the Mexican border and that the checkpoints are not a violation of the Fourth Amendment.
Berkemer v. McCarty, 468 U.S. 420 (1984), is a decision of the United States Supreme Court which ruled that, in the case of a person stopped for a misdemeanor traffic offense, once they are in custody, the protections of the Fifth Amendment apply to them pursuant to the decision in Miranda v. Arizona 384 U.S. 436 (1966). Previously, some courts had been applying Miranda only to serious offenses.
Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806 (1996), was a unanimous United States Supreme Court decision that "declared that any traffic offense committed by a driver was a legitimate legal basis for a stop."
Florida v. Jardines, 569 U.S. 1 (2013), was a United States Supreme Court case which resulted in the decision that police use of a trained detection dog to sniff for narcotics on the front porch of a private home is a "search" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, and therefore, without consent, requires both probable cause and a search warrant.
Florida v. Harris, 568 U.S. 237 (2013), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court addressed the reliability of a dog sniff by a detection dog trained to identify narcotics, under the specific context of whether law enforcement's assertions that the dog is trained or certified is sufficient to establish probable cause for a search of a vehicle under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Harris was the first Supreme Court case to challenge the dog's reliability, backed by data that asserts that on average, up to 80% of a dog's alerts are wrong. Twenty-four U.S. States, the federal government, and two U.S. territories filed briefs in support of Florida as amici curiae.
Rodriguez v. United States, 575 U.S. ___ (2015), was a United States Supreme Court case which analyzed whether police officers may extend the length of a traffic stop to conduct a search with a trained detection dog. In a 6–3 opinion, the Court held that officers may not extend the length of a traffic stop to conduct a dog sniff unrelated to the original purpose of the stop. However, the Court remanded the case to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit to determine whether the officer's extension of the traffic stop was independently justified by reasonable suspicion. Some analysts have suggested that the Court's decision to limit police authority was influenced by ongoing protests in Ferguson, Missouri.
