“A man’s house is his castle,” the English jurist Sir Edward Coke declared in 1644.
America’s founders put it into more ornate language almost two centuries later: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
Although neither Sir Edward Coke nor the authors of the Bill of Rights had ever heard of automobiles, we’re confident that if they had they would have said the inside of somebody’s car should be just as secure as his house from unreasonable, warrantless searches.
That ancient principle of the English common law and the American Constitution was thrown out the window by many states, including Oregon, when they decided to allow police to set up random checkpoints to catch drunken drivers. The US Supreme Court ruled in 1990 that while the checkpoints appeared to violate the Fourth Amendment, the public interest in getting drunks off the road trumped constitutional concerns.
Fortunately, the Oregon Supreme Court had ruled three years earlier that sobriety checkpoints violated the state constitution. But now there’s a move afoot to bring them back. Some law enforcement officials and anti-drunk driving groups want to put an initiative on the ballot that would declare the checkpoints constitutional. For reasons of practicality as well as principle, it’s a rotten idea.
From a practical standpoint, it’s doubtful that sobriety checkpoints are very effective at doing what they’re supposed to do – busting drunk drivers and reducing highway carnage.
Writing in dissent in the 1990 case, Justice John Paul Stevens noted that “the findings of the trial court, based on an extensive record … indicate that the net effect of sobriety checkpoints on traffic safety is infinitesimal and possibly negative.” A study done in Kansas City in 2007 found that out of more than 18,700 drivers stopped at checkpoints that year, less than 2% were arrested for DUI. The study indicated that saturation patrols – putting lots of cops on the road to flag down drivers who seem impaired – were far more efficient at actually catching drunks.
There’s no evidence that there’s less drunk driving in states that allow checkpoints than in those that don’t, or that Oregon had less drunk driving pre-1987 than it does now. And nationwide, the rates of drunk driving and alcohol-related highway deaths have remained steady since the mid-1990s, even though 39 of the 50 states use checkpoints.
Even if the checkpoints were more effective, the move to reinstate them deserves to be rejected on principle. The legislature, or the voters, shouldn’t get in the habit of carving a chunk out of the state constitution every time it seems expedient to do so.
The state supreme court was right to boot sobriety checkpoints in 1987, and we’re following its example by giving them THE BOOT now.
This article appears in Apr 9-15, 2009.
MAKE LOCAL JOURNALISM HAPPEN
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
The last thing we need is in this area is for the any of our law enforcement groups to be given any more power. They are already completely out of control with absolutely no bounds to what they can do to anyone along with a DA department that supports their self-righteous activities.
Here is the simple solution……….are you ready?
Don’t drive drunk and you will be passed right through these check points, your life not having been affected in any way.
I don’t know how effective the stops are. Everyone claims to have statistics on both sides. And, if it caught 2%, how many do we think they should have caught? Five percent? Ten percent? And, the posting of the locations with signs, etc. make it easy for the out-of-their-skull drunks to avoid them. That 2% are candidates for Darwin Awards.
A home is a castle–but no drunk is going to plow into me at 60 mph sitting on a sofa. What should we do? Budget problems are going to make enforce harder and less likely. CO already arrests and releases every day poster children, repeat offenders who ignore the law and continue their behaviors until catastrophe strike.
Personally, I think this is a bright, shiny object that Salem politicians are using to distract the public from what they should be paying attention to. Easier to distract than to actually work on the tough problems.
Jon: Your argument is a variation of the old one that “if you don’t do anything wrong you have nothing to worry about,” used by totalitarians through the ages.
Stephen: What should be done? Well, instead of randomly stopping and harassing thousands of innocent citizens I think it makes a lot more sense to take away the licenses — and the vehicles — of repeat DUI offenders. The confiscated vehicles should be sold and the income used to defray the costs of law enforcement.
HBM-
You think they should take away DUII people’s cars? Isn’t that a little harsh? I mean if a sober person drives through a sobriety checkpoint and is “harassed” isn’t taking the car/property of people “Harassment”? Jon hit it on the head, I would be happy to stop at a sobriety check point, if it gets drunk people off the road, I am all for it…nothing good comes from drunk/impaired drivers….nothing.
Lefty–
HBM qualified his comment with ‘repeat offenders’ and I am willing to go along with that. These are the poster children I refer to–and even if they don’t have a license and lose a vehicle, you can rest assured that they will somehow end up with another car and be out on the road again. They may be ‘sick’ but their illness kills someone sooner or later.
Let’s face it–they are out there driving and they are dangerous. The reactive approach is to wait for them to get caught. The checkpoint programs were promoted as a ‘proactive’ approach by groups like MADD and the political clout of a group that uses the personal tragedies caused by drunks behind the wheel can’t be denied. The stops have widespread support.
Inconvenience gets categorized as harassment, though, and I haven’t heard of an innocent party being swept up by mistake at one of the checkpoints. Nor do I read or hear of them being expanded to include searches for illegal aliens (tried once in SoCal, I believe), illegal weapons, narcotics possession, or general warrants. If I’m wrong, I apologize. The risk that they might or could be expanded to do so is the ‘slippery slope’ argument I reject outright as illogical and paranoid.
How come everyone is all for “a man’s home is his castle” when it affects them, but they’re all for banning cigarette smoking in cars. (and I don’t smoke btw).
Oh yeah.. it’s for the chiiiiiiilllllldren.
Sobriety Check Points ROCK and they RULE. There should be a lot more of them. Drinking and driving is ILLEGAL and if you are on a PUBLIC ROAD, the one I drive on every day, they you are sharing a responsibility with society. If you have your own private land and want to drive around smoking the hippie cabbage, drink yourself into a coma and run into juniper trees, then be my guest. But every day I get in my car I TRUST that moron coming at me to be sober, not high on drugs and not to cross the yellow striped line and kill me and my family.
Sobriety check points are very common in most civilized countries. 50 % of all drives in Deschutes County DO NOT HAVE LIABILITY INSURANCE, then are wasted on top of this and end up putting someone in a wheelchair or kill them and that is fine? Not on my watch.
Driving a car is a PRIVILEGE , NOT a birthright as some think it is. If you are intimidated by driving drunk, then pick up your cell phone and call a cab. They are paid to drive your wasted butt back home to keep the roads safe for all of us.
Perhaps you will feel the same way about drunk drivers when you lose a loved one to a drunk driver. Is that what it is going to take to have you agree with me? If so then you are a fool.
Stoned drivers should be tested also. If you have THC in your system, then you should not be allowed to drive at all. It is a drug that affects reaction timing and judgement. I am fine with the people that want to smoke it. Go ahead as it is not my brain rotting.
I support Sobriety Check Points in our community and not enough of them are done. Set one up at every intersection in downtown Bend and lock it down for a saturday night and do so at about midnight. That will generate some revenue for our failing city budget. I support this fully.
If you drive a car drunk, then you have no right to be on the road, that is the point, not the illegal search and seizure that you want to whine about
Mr. Right,
Based on your argument, since I live (fictitously)in your neighborhood, I have a reasonable expectation that you should not be a murdered. So I am all for police officers coming to your doorstep in the middle of the night and searching your home to make sure that you’re not. Where does it end?