State v. Muzik

• Decision Date: 31 December 1985
• Docket Number: No. C5-85-952,C5-85-952
• Citation: 379 N.W.2d 599
• Parties: STATE of Minnesota, Appellant, v. Daniel Lee MUZIK, Respondent.
• Court: Minnesota Court of Appeals

Page 599

379 N.W.2d 599

STATE of Minnesota, Appellant, v. Daniel Lee MUZIK, Respondent.

No. C5-85-952.

Court of Appeals of Minnesota.

Dec. 31, 1985.

Syllabus by the Court

The State did not establish the reasonableness under the fourth amendment of an automobile stop at a police checkpoint set up to detect and apprehend drinking drivers. The trial court properly suppressed evidence obtained as a result of the stop.

Hubert H. Humphrey, III, Atty. Gen., St. Paul, Paul A. Rajkowski, Waite Park City Atty., St. Cloud, for appellant.

Michael O. Burns, St. Cloud, for respondent.

Heard, considered and decided by Crippen, Presiding Judge, Wozniak, Judge, and Lansing, Judge.

OPINION

LANSING, Judge.

This appeal raises the question whether a police checkpoint or roadblock set up to detect drinking drivers violates the fourth amendment of the United States Constitution. The trial court found the checkpoint stop unconstitutional and suppressed all evidence against Daniel Muzik obtained as a result. We affirm.

FACTS

From 10:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. on October 4-5, 1984, officers of the Waite Park Police Department and deputies from the Stearns County Sheriff's Department conducted a checkpoint/roadblock in the City of Waite Park. Respondent Daniel Muzik was stopped at this checkpoint during the early morning hours of October 5, 1984. As a result of the stop, Muzik was arrested and charged with driving under the influence of alcohol.

At an omnibus hearing held to determine the validity of the stop, the Waite Park chief of police, Kenneth Dickinson, testified that the purpose of the roadblock was to conduct a "safety check," for headlights, taillights, directional signals, and driver's licenses. At a meeting at the police station in advance of the checkpoint operation, Dickinson told the 14 to 16 officers involved to stop every vehicle that came into the checkpoint area, ask the driver to produce a driver's license, and look for "violations of equipment and so forth."

Chief Dickinson chose the particular stretch of road for the "safety check" because it was "a well travelled roadway," and because of an adjacent "well-lit" parking lot for channeling the motorists. An oncoming motorist would see a "city vehicle with a caution light in the area to show people there was something going on." Officers directed traffic into the parking lot with the aid of flashlights.

Dickinson said there was no official or published public notice that the checkpoint would be in operation. The checkpoint was initiated and organized solely at the discretion of Chief Dickinson. The mayor of Waite Park visited the checkpoint, but only in response to a citizen's call.

Finally, Dickinson testified that

due to the public concern about people drinking and driving and so forth, it was publicized last year through the Mother's Against Drunk Drivers that safety checks should be conducted periodically by different departments. My department was one, St. Cloud P.D. was another, and I think there was another one conducted in the Benton County area. However, due to that type of thing we had a safety check conducted in October of '83 and I decided again to conduct one in October of '84.

Dickinson acknowledged that part of his motive in setting up the checkpoint was public concern about drunk drivers.

The trial court found that the primary purpose of the checkpoint was to arrest drivers who were under the influence of alcohol, that every vehicle travelling the roadway was stopped, and that the stops were made without regard to probable cause and without specific and articulable facts for stopping each vehicle. The trial court also found that there was no advance warning of the roadblock to approaching motorists. The trial court suppressed all evidence gathered as a result of the stop, ruling the checkpoint detention violated the fourth amendment of the United States Constitution and article 1, section 10, of the Minnesota Constitution.

The State in its brief to this court asserts that the length of each detention was 45 to 90 seconds, unless violations were observed, and that

[d]uring the safety check, 74 warning tickets were issued for equipment violations, three tickets were issued for expired registration, one ticket was issued for driving after revocation and three tickets were issued for driving while under the influence.

Although these statements do not have evidentiary support in the record, Muzik accepted the State's account of the facts, and we incorporate them on review.

ISSUE

Did the Waite Park checkpoint violate the fourth amendment?

ANALYSIS

A checkpoint stop of an automobile and its occupants is a "seizure" within the meaning of the fourth amendment. United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U.S. 543, 556, 96 S.Ct. 3074, 3082, 49 L.Ed.2d 1116 (1976). In upholding the permanent checkpoints established in Martinez-Fuerte for detecting incoming illegal aliens, the Supreme Court made it clear that automobile stops without probable cause or a reasonable suspicion of criminal conduct are not per se violative of the fourth amendment.

Instead, the Court has instructed that

[t]he reasonableness of seizures that are less intrusive than a traditional arrest, [citations omitted] depends "on a balance between the public interest and the individual's right to personal security free from arbitrary interference by law officers." Pennsylvania v. Mimms, 434 U.S. 106, 109 [98 S.Ct. 330, 332, 54 L.Ed.2d 331] (1977) * * *. Consideration of the constitutionality of such seizures involves 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, 50-51, 99 S.Ct. 2637, 2640, 61 L.Ed.2d 357 (1979).

The United States Supreme Court has not decided the constitutional validity of a DWI checkpoint and thus has not balanced the competing fourth amendment interests. In Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648, 99 S.Ct. 1391, 59 L.Ed.2d 660 (1979), the Court held that random driver's license and registration-check stops of single automobiles violated the fourth amendment. However, in dicta the Court stated:

This 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.

Prouse at 663, 99 S.Ct. at 1401 (footnote omitted). This dicta, approving roadblock stops, has spawned a great deal of constitutional litigation. ¹ Our survey of the cases accords with Professor LaFave's conclusion that "a DWI roadblock is constitutional if properly conducted." 3 W. LaFave, Search and Seizure: A Treatise on the Fourth Amendment § 10.8(g) (1978) (Supp.1985 at 190). In order to determine whether the Waite Park checkpoint was constitutionally conducted, we apply the balancing test delineated in Brown v. Texas.

The Brown balancing test addresses first the gravity of the public concern served by this seizure. In Heddan v. Dirkswager, 336 N.W.2d 54 (Minn.1983), upholding the constitutionality of prehearing license revocation proceedings, our supreme court observed that

[s]tatistics linking drunken driving with the tragedy of death and injury on our nation's highways abound. Forst Lowry, the Safety Program Coordinator for the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, testified that in 1981 52% of the drivers killed in Minnesota had a blood alcohol concentration of .10 or more and 62% of drivers killed had some measureable alcohol concentration. It is estimated that in 1980 over 400 persons were killed in Minnesota because of drunken drivers and direct economic loss amounted to approximately $114 million.

* * *

As the statistics cited above point out, drunken drivers pose a severe threat to the health and safety of the citizens of Minnesota.

Id. at 62-63. The court concluded that the State's interest in highway safety was "compelling." Id. at 63. The statistics in Heddan justify the conclusion that the effects of drunk driving are grave and the public interest served by the checkpoint is great. See also Stark v. Perpich, 590 F.Supp. at 1060 (the problem of drunk driving is unquestionably a legitimate and important concern of the State).

The second element of the Brown test, the degree to which the seizure advances the public concern involved, was also examined in Delaware v. Prouse. In Prouse, the court questioned whether

the discretionary spot check is a sufficiently productive mechanism to justify the intrusion upon Fourth Amendment interests which such stops entail. On the record before us, that question must be answered in the negative. Given the alternative mechanisms available, both those in use and those that might be adopted, we are unconvinced that the incremental contribution to highway safety of the random spot check justifies the practice under the Fourth Amendment.

The foremost method of enforcing traffic and vehicle safety regulations, it must be recalled, is acting upon observed violations. Vehicle stops for traffic violations occur countless times each day; and on these occasions, licenses and registration papers are subject to inspection and drivers without them will be ascertained. Furthermore, drivers without licenses are presumably the less safe drivers whose propensities may well exhibit themselves. Absent some empirical data to the contrary, it must be assumed that finding an unlicensed driver among those who commit traffic violations is a much more likely event than finding an unlicensed driver by choosing randomly from the entire universe of drivers. * * * In terms of actually discovering unlicensed drivers or deterring them from driving, the spot check does not appear sufficiently productive to qualify as a reasonable law enforcement practice under the Fourth Amendment.

Prouse, ...