Hagood v. Town of Town Creek

• Decision Date: 03 September 1993
• Citation: 628 So.2d 1057
• Parties: Randall Lloyd HAGOOD v. TOWN OF TOWN CREEK. CR 92-1037.
• Court: Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals

Page 1057

628 So.2d 1057

62 USLW 2215

Randall Lloyd HAGOOD v. TOWN OF TOWN CREEK.

CR 92-1037.

Court of Criminal Appeals of Alabama.

Sept. 3, 1993.

Don White, Moulton, for appellant.

Joseph W. Propst, Decatur, for appellee.

BOWEN, Presiding Judge.

The appellant, Randall Lloyd Hagood, was convicted in Town Creek municipal court of driving under the influence (DUI), disorderly conduct, and resisting arrest. He appealed to Lawrence Circuit Court for a trial de novo and was convicted by a jury of DUI and of disorderly conduct. The jury acquitted him of resisting arrest. On the DUI conviction, the appellant was fined $500, was ordered to pay court costs, and was sentenced to seven days in the county jail. The jail sentence was suspended upon payment of the fine and court costs. On the disorderly conduct conviction, the appellant was fined $350 and was ordered to pay court costs. On this direct appeal from the circuit court convictions, the appellant raises two issues.

I

The charges against the appellant arose when he was stopped at a roadblock being operated by Town Creek police officers. The appellant contends that this roadblock was unconstitutional and that, consequently, all the evidence against him, which was seized as a result of that roadblock, should have been suppressed.

At the pre-trial suppression hearing, Town Creek Police Chief Kenneth Holland testified that, on the night of May 25, 1991, he, Assistant Chief Donavan Hagwood, and Officers Bob Gordon and Jessie Borden operated a roadblock on Church Street in the northern end of town. The officers "stayed a couple of hours and it wouldn't [sic] no traffic there at all," R. 21, so they moved the roadblock to the intersection of Auburn Street and Mauldin Street. The appellant was stopped at this second roadblock.

Assistant Chief Hagwood testified that Mauldin Street "deadends into" Auburn Street. R. 25. It appears from the testimony of Holland and Hagwood that the Town Creek Apartments are located at this intersection and that Mauldin Street essentially becomes the entrance to the apartments.

Holland and Hagwood stated that the roadblocks were conducted upon the "mutual agreement" of the four officers. R. 10, 29-30. Holland testified that he had apprised the mayor and the city council at a city council meeting that he "was going to have a license check, road block, two in that town the following week," because he "had to get the overtime approved." R. 10.

Chief Holland testified that the officers placed two patrol cars at the stop sign on Mauldin Street. Assistant Chief Hagwood stopped all traffic coming into the intersection on Mauldin Street, while Chief Holland and the two officers stopped all traffic traveling in either direction on Auburn Street. Although there had been no formal training on the matter, Hagwood stated that the officers "check[ed] each vehicle the same no matter what." R. 26. Chief Holland testified that the stops were "just long enough to look at [a driver's] license and check his tag and so forth." R. 12. After the appellant was arrested, the roadblock was disbanded "for lack of manpower to keep it open." R. 31.

When asked to describe the safety precautions taken by the officers at the roadblock, Chief Holland stated: "We had the parking lights on the car, the two patrol cars there, and we had these mag flash lights with the honey combs on them, the red, yellow, just like a stick--" R. 12. Holland stated that the red or yellow "sticks" were "a half a foot or more" in length, R. 12, and could be seen "for a mile and a half or further," R. 23. The officers did not wear reflectorized traffic safety vests.

When asked what had been his "particular purpose for setting up a roadblock at the intersection of Auburn and Mauldin," Chief Holland replied, "Trying to stop so much trouble in the [Town Creek] [A]partments over there." R. 9 (emphasis added). Chief Holland testified that he and his officers "ma[d]e numerous arrests on individuals ... at those apartments." Id. On cross-examination, the following occurred:

"Q. [By defense counsel:] And this [roadblock] was set up as--for the sole purpose of stopping and observing the automobiles that were going into the Town Creek Apartments?

"A. Yes, sir, more or less to cut down on trouble over there." R. 16 (emphasis added).

It was not until trial that Chief Holland explained the "trouble" the roadblock was intended to prevent:

"Q. [By town prosecutor:] Tell me about this roadblock; why you put it there and what y'all were doing.

"A. We had so much going on at the Town of Town Creek Apartments over there, fighting, drunk and disorderly over there. The town wanted us to tighten up a little bit there and we could catch a lot of it there on the street before it got in there. We could save a lot of the old people misery over there, you know." R. 67 (emphasis added).

"License checks, sobriety checkpoints, and roadblocks are not intrinsically unconstitutional." McInnish v. State, 584 So.2d 935, 936 (Ala.Cr.App.1991). However, it is clear "that a Fourth Amendment 'seizure' occurs when a vehicle is stopped at [such an operation]." Michigan Dep't of State Police v. Sitz, 496 U.S. 444, 450, 110 S.Ct. 2481, 2485, 110 L.Ed.2d 412 (1990) (sobriety checkpoints). Accord United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U.S. 543, 556, 96 S.Ct. 3074, 3082, 49 L.Ed.2d 1116 (1976) (immigration checkpoints); Garrett v. Goodwin, 569 F.Supp. 106, 116 (E.D.Ark.1982) ("roadblock conducted for any purpose"). See also Brower v. County of Inyo, 489 U.S. 593, 599, 109 S.Ct. 1378, 1383, 103 L.Ed.2d 628 (1989) (use of roadblock to stop driver of stolen car). In order to be constitutionally permissible, the stop must be reasonable. Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648, 653-54, 99 S.Ct. 1391, 1396, 59 L.Ed.2d 660 (1979); Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U.S. at 562, 96 S.Ct. at 3085. See also United States v. Sharpe, 470 U.S. 675, 682, 105 S.Ct. 1568, 1573, 84 L.Ed.2d 605 (1985) ("[t]he Fourth Amendment is not, of course, a guarantee against all searches and seizures, but only against unreasonable searches and seizures") (emphasis in original).

In Cains v. State, 555 So.2d 290 (Ala.Cr.App.1989), this Court analyzed the United States Supreme Court's decisions in United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. 873, 95 S.Ct. 2574, 45 L.Ed.2d 607 (1975), Martinez-Fuerte, Prouse, and Texas v. Brown, 460 U.S. 730, 103 S.Ct. 1535, 75 L.Ed.2d 502 (1983), and concluded that, under those cases,

"random stops or spot checks [of vehicles] are unreasonable in the absence of individualized suspicion of wrongdoing; on the other hand, stops [of vehicles] at fixed checkpoints or roadblocks are reasonable if they are carried out pursuant to a neutral and objective plan, are supported by a strong public interest, and are only minimally intrusive to the individual motorist."

Cains, 555 So.2d at 293. We noted that "most courts and commentators have used the ... three-part test set out in Brown v. Texas " in balancing the public interest advanced by the roadblock and "the degree of intrusion on the individual motorist." Cains, 555 So.2d at 294. That test requires "a weighing of the gravity of the public concerns served by the seizure, the degree to which the seizure advances the public interest, and the severity of the interference with individual liberty." Brown v. Texas, 443 U.S. 47 at 50-51, 99 S.Ct. 2637 at 2640, 61 L.Ed.2d 357 (1979), quoted in Cains, 555 So.2d at 294. Applying this balancing test to the particular roadblock in Cains, a sobriety checkpoint "established on a well-travelled route north of the beach at the end of a spring weekend," 555 So.2d at 298, we determined that "the public interest in promoting highway safety by detecting, removing, and prosecuting drunk drivers is extremely great," id. at 294; that this interest was adequately advanced by a checkpoint at "a time and place at which it is likely that drunk drivers would be found," id. at 298; and that these factors outweighed the minimal intrusion to those stopped. ¹

Less than nine months after our decision in Cains, the United States Supreme Court again addressed the question of roadblocks in Michigan Dep't of State Police v. Sitz. At issue in Sitz were sobriety checkpoints conducted under guidelines established by the Sobriety Checkpoint Advisory Committee appointed by the Director of the Michigan Department of State Police. The Court held that the Brown v. Texas balancing test was the correct method to determine the reasonableness of the checkpoints. 496 U.S. at 450, 110 S.Ct. at 2485. After observing that "[n]o one can seriously dispute the magnitude of the drunken driving problem or the States' interest in eradicating it," 496 U.S. at 451, 110 S.Ct. at 2485, the Court concluded: "[T]he State's interest in preventing drunken driving, the extent to which this system can reasonably be said to advance that interest, and the degree of intrusion upon individual motorists who are briefly stopped, weighs in favor of the state program." 496 U.S. at 455, 110 S.Ct. at 2488.

It is clear from Sitz and Cains that the particular purpose of or governmental interest to be served by a roadblock is a critical factor in assessing whether the roadblock was reasonable. That particular purpose or interest "must be sufficient to outweigh the invasion of privacy occasioned by the roadblock-style stop." 1 W. Ringel, Searches & Seizures, Arrests & Confessions § 11.6(c) at 11-45 (2d ed. 1991). "The state's interest in enforcing its registration and licensing laws and the difficulty in enforcing the laws by any other method," "the federal government's interest in enforcement of the immigration laws," id., and the state's interest in eradicating drunk driving, Sitz, 496 U.S. at 451-52, 110 S.Ct. at 2485-86; Cains, 555 So.2d at 294, have all been held sufficient to outweigh a minor intrusion upon persons stopped at roadblocks conducted for those purposes.

In the present case, the stated purpose of the roadblock...