Com. v. McGeoghegan

• Citation: 449 N.E.2d 349,389 Mass. 137
• Parties: , 37 A.L.R.4th 1 COMMONWEALTH v. Harvey McGEOGHEGAN (and fourteen companion cases 1 ).
• Decision Date: 11 May 1983
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts

Page 349

449 N.E.2d 349

389 Mass. 137, 37 A.L.R.4th 1

COMMONWEALTH v. Harvey McGEOGHEGAN (and fourteen companion cases

¹

).

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts,

Suffolk.

Argued May 5, 1982.

Decided May 11, 1983.

Michael J. Traft, Asst. Dist. Atty. (Ellen Fulham, Asst. Dist. Atty., with him), for the Commonwealth.

Jeanne Baker, Cambridge (John Reinstein, Boston, and Stephanie A. Cleverdon, Cambridge, with her, for Richard Smith, Dominic J. Paratore, Belmont, for John Mitchell and Leonard A. Hanlon, Medford, for Herbert Cruikshank, also with her).

Before HENNESSEY, C.J., and WILKINS, LIACOS, ABRAMS, NOLAN, LYNCH and O'CONNOR, JJ.

O'CONNOR, Justice.

In this appeal by the Commonwealth from the dismissal of several criminal complaints, we consider the lawfulness of a roadblock stop of motor vehicles for the purpose of detecting drunk drivers. A District Court judge heard the defendant McGeoghegan's motion to dismiss the complaints against him, and the parties agreed that the judge's rulings on that motion would apply to the complaints against the other defendants as well. McGeoghegan's motion, which states that it was filed by direction of the court, was expressly grounded on the contention that McGeoghegan's motor vehicle was unlawfully stopped. The implied contention is that the evidence which provided the basis for the issuance of the complaints was unlawfully obtained as a result of the stop. After hearing McGeoghegan's motion, the judge dismissed all the complaints against the defendants. The Commonwealth appealed, and we granted the Commonwealth's application for direct appellate review. We affirm the orders dismissing the complaints.

The parties agreed at the hearing on the motion to dismiss that McGeoghegan was in a motor vehicle that had been stopped at a roadblock, that the police asked him for his "papers," that he showed signs of having been drinking and was taken from his vehicle to a nearby van, where he took and failed a breathalyzer test, and that he was arrested and his vehicle was towed away. It was also agreed that the police had no cause initially to stop McGeoghegan "except that he was one ... of two hundred or more motorists that were stopped as they passed the roadblock stoppoint."

There are additional undisputed facts. The roadblock was conducted by the Revere police department on North Shore Road and Mills Avenue in that city on the evening of January 15, 1982. This was the result of a plan formulated earlier that day by the police chief and four subordinates. The area of the roadblock was a heavily travelled highway. The main purpose of the roadblock was to detect drunk drivers.

The stopping of McGeoghegan's motor vehicle was a seizure within the meaning of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution and was required by those amendments to be reasonable. Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648, 653-654, 99 S.Ct. 1391, 1395-1396, 59 L.Ed.2d 660 (1979). United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. 873, 878, 95 S.Ct. 2574, 2578, 45 L.Ed.2d 607 (1975). "[T]he reasonableness of such seizures depends on a balance between the public interest and the individual's right to personal security free from arbitrary interference by law officers." Id. The reasonableness standard usually requires that the facts on which an intrusion is based be measured against probable cause, Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 149, 45 S.Ct. 280, 283, 69 L.Ed. 543 (1925), or, in limited instances, on articulable, reasonable suspicion focusing on the affected individual. United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, supra, 422 U.S. at 881, 95 S.Ct. at 2580. See Delaware v. Prouse, supra 440 U.S. at 654-656, 99 S.Ct. at 1396-1397.

No method of spot checking motor vehicles to discover drunk drivers, in the absence of probable cause or articulable suspicion, has been held by the Supreme Court of the United States to be constitutionally permissible. However, the Supreme Court has not precluded the possibility that a constitutionally permissible spot check method might be devised.

In Delaware v. Prouse, supra, the Court distinguished random stops of motor vehicles from roadblocks, where "the motorist can see that other vehicles are being stopped, he can see visible signs of the officers' authority, and he is much less likely to be frightened or annoyed by the intrusion." Id. at 657, 99 S.Ct. at 1398, quoting from United States v. Ortiz, 422 U.S. 891, 895, 95 S.Ct. 2585, 2588, 45 L.Ed.2d 623 (1975). Delaware v. Prouse involved the random stopping of motor vehicles for the purpose of checking drivers' licenses and vehicle registrations. The Court held that such stops were impermissible unless based on specific, articulable facts. However, the Court announced that its "holding does not preclude the State of Delaware or other States from developing methods for spot checks that involve less intrusion or that do not involve the unconstrained exercise of discretion. Questioning of all oncoming traffic at roadblock-type stops is one possible alternative." Id. 440 U.S. at 663, 99 S.Ct. at 1401. The Court had previously held in United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U.S. 543, 96 S.Ct. 3074, 49 L.Ed.2d 1116 (1976), that the routine stopping of motor vehicles at a fixed, permanent checkpoint by Federal Border Patrol agents to check for illegal aliens was lawful, noting that motorists using highways with permanent checkpoints are not taken by surprise "as they know, or may obtain knowledge of, the location of the checkpoints and will not be stopped elsewhere." Id. at 559, 96 S.Ct. at 3083.

This court has not previously decided a case in which a question of the lawfulness of a roadblock stop of motor vehicles was involved. However, a somewhat similar question was presented in Commonwealth v. Harris, 383 Mass. 655, 421 N.E.2d 447 (1981). There we held that a warrantless search of persons entering the Suffolk County Court House was constitutionally permissible when its purpose was to protect that "sensitive facility" from the danger of violence. We noted that the defendant "was not singled out for different treatment from others similarly situated, the search could not have been a surprise to him, and he made no objection. Although elements of coercion were inherent in the situation, the element of voluntariness reduced the intrusiveness of the procedure." We recognized the search as being consensual in the same way as in the airport search cases, citing McMorris v. Alioto, 567 F.2d 897, 901 (9th Cir.1978). Commonwealth v. Harris, supra, 383 Mass. at ---, Mass.Adv.Sh. (1981) at 1258, 421 N.E.2d 447.

Decisions of two Federal courts of appeals and the Supreme Court of Oregon, subsequent to Delaware v. Prouse, supra, provide some assistance in an identification of factors that are significant to a determination whether a roadblock spot check method of discovering drunk drivers is a sufficiently reasonable accommodation of the public's interest in highway safety with the individual's right to personal security so as to be permissible under the United States Constitution. ² In United States v. Miller, 608 F.2d 1089 (5th Cir.1979), cert. denied, 447 U.S. 926, 100 S.Ct. 3020, 65 L.Ed.2d 1119 (1980), officers of the Texas Department of Public Safety set up a routine license and vehicle registration checkpoint adjacent to a Border Patrol checkpoint, a lighted area, on Highway 67 in Texas. All cars travelling in either direction were stopped. The court noted that this was "a procedure apparently approved in Delaware v. Prouse." Id. at 1093.

In United States v. Prichard, 645 F.2d 854 (10th Cir.1981), cert. denied, 454 U.S. 832, 102 S.Ct. 130, 70 L.Ed.2d 110 (1981), the central issue was whether the search of a Ford Bronco automobile, which resulted in the seizure of cocaine valued at $20,000,000, was lawful. Two New Mexico State police officers, with their supervisor's permission, had established a roadblock at about noon on an interstate highway for the purpose of conducting a routine driver's license and registration check. "The officers testified that it was their intent to stop all westbound vehicles, except for semi-trucks, which had already been stopped at a port of entry. When the cars began to 'pile-up,' however, the officers would wave all of the stopped cars through in order to prevent the situation from becoming unduly hazardous. One officer estimated that they would allow no more than ten cars to back up before they waved all of the stopped cars on through. After they cleared the area, the officers would begin to stop cars again." Id. at 855. It was in this setting that the Ford Bronco was stopped, culminating in the seizure of the cocaine. Relying on the dictum in Delaware v. Prouse, the court held that the roadblock stop of the Ford Bronco was lawful. The court reasoned that "[w]hile this may not have been a '100% roadblock' of the type referred to in Prouse, it is nonetheless a long way from the selective, single car stop denounced in Prouse. In the instant case, the New Mexico State police were attempting to stop all westbound traffic on an interstate highway, insofar as was humanly possible. The decision not to stop trucks was reasonable under the circumstances, because, presumably, they had all been stopped at a port of entry. The purpose of the roadblock, i.e., to check drivers' licenses and car registrations, was a legitimate one. If, in the process of so doing, the officers saw evidence of other crimes, they had the right to take reasonable investigative steps and were not required to close their eyes. See United States v. Merryman, 630 F.2d 780, 782-785 (10th Cir.1980). Furthermore, allowing all the stopped cars through when traffic became congested was also reasonable and ... non-violative of the rule of Prouse." United States v. Prichard, supra at 856-857.

State v. Tourtillott, 289 Or. 845, 618 P.2d 423 (1980), cert. denied, 451 U.S. 972, 101 S.Ct. 2051, 68 L.Ed.2d 352 (1981), involved a...