State v. Patterson

• Decision Date: 28 November 1990
• Parties: STATE of Maine v. Orville PATTERSON, Jr.
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

Page 1204

582 A.2d 1204

STATE of Maine v. Orville PATTERSON, Jr.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Argued Sept. 19, 1990.

Decided Nov. 28, 1990.

R. Christopher Almy, Dist. Atty., Jessie Gunther (orally), Asst. Dist. Atty., Bangor, for the State.

John D. Clifford (orally), Huston & Clifford, Freeport, for defendant.

Before McKUSICK, C.J., and WATHEN, GLASSMAN, COLLINS and BRODY, JJ.

McKUSICK, Chief Justice.

The Superior Court (Penobscot County, Smith J.) entered judgment on defendant Orville Patterson's conditional plea of guilty to the charge of operating a motor vehicle while an habitual offender, 29 M.R.S.A. § 2298 (Class C) (Supp.1989). On appeal, defendant challenges the denial by the Superior Court (Browne, A.R.J.) of his motion to suppress evidence. Defendant contends that a state police officer stopped him at an illegal roadblock that tainted all of the evidence the officer obtained after the stop. We affirm the court's finding that the stop did not violate defendant's right, secured by the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution and article I, section 5, of the Maine Constitution, to be free of an unreasonable seizure.

In the early afternoon of Saturday, September 30, 1989, on Route 178 in Eddington, Maine State Police Officer Barry Curtis conducted a roadblock for the purpose of checking vehicle safety. The uniformed officer parked his plainly marked cruiser in the middle of the road and stopped all cars coming from both directions. At approximately 1:50 p.m., the officer saw a pickup truck stop and change drivers about 100 yards from the roadblock. The driver, defendant Orville Patterson, slid over to the passenger seat, while his passenger, Harold Spann, got out and walked into the trees along the side of the road. When Spann returned to the truck, he got into the driver's seat. The officer stopped the truck when it came up to his cruiser. He asked both men for licenses, but defendant refused to surrender one, saying that he did not have to because he was not driving. The officer put defendant in the cruiser and ran a license check. On learning that defendant's license had been suspended, Officer Curtis arrested him.

We first addressed the constitutionality of a police roadblock in State v. Cloukey, 486 A.2d 143 (Me.1985), which involved as does this case a roadblock designed to check traffic safety features. There we distinguished the fixed roadblock from the roving stop held unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court in Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648, 99 S.Ct. 1391, 59 L.Ed.2d 660 (1979). In Cloukey, 486 A.2d at 145, our analysis "beg[an] with the fundamental question whether the action of the police officers in conducting the roadblock was 'reasonable' under the Fourth Amendment." In finding the safety check roadblock at issue in Cloukey reasonable, we adopted the test set forth in Delaware v. Prouse:

"[T]he permissibility of a particular law enforcement practice is judged by balancing its intrusion on the individual's Fourth Amendment interests against its promotion of legitimate governmental interests."

State v. Cloukey, 486 A.2d at 145 (quoting Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. at 654, 99 S.Ct. at 1396). All of our subsequent roadblock cases have continued to apply a flexible balancing test between the magnitude of the intrusion and the state interest advanced. See State v. Sherburne, 571 A.2d 1181, 1184 (Me.1990) (fish and wildlife roadblock); State v. McMahon, 557 A.2d 1324, 1325 (Me.1989) (vehicle safety and OUI roadblock); State v. Leighton, 551 A.2d 116, 117 (Me.1988) (OUI roadblock).

We are confirmed in our approach by the United States Supreme Court's decision within the year in Michigan Dep't. of State Police v. Sitz, 496 U.S. 444, 110 S.Ct. 2481, 110 L.Ed.2d 412 (1990), which affirmed the constitutionality of "sobriety checkpoints" or OUI roadblocks conducted by Michigan's state police. Sitz, id., 110 S.Ct. at 2485, applied the balancing test developed in Brown v. Texas, 443 U.S. 47, 50-51, 99 S.Ct. 2637, 2640, 61 L.Ed.2d 357 (1979), that

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.

The Brown test differs from the two-pronged test in Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. at 654, 99 S.Ct. at 1396, that we have traditionally applied to roadblocks, only by considering the prong of "promotion of legitimate governmental interests" in two parts rather than one. For ease of analysis, Brown looks at the "gravity" of the public interest as a measure of its legitimacy and at the extent the seizure "advances" the interest as a measure of its promotion. Brown v. Texas, 443 U.S. at 51, 99 S.Ct. at 2640. Consequently, on our review of the Superior Court's ruling, we will apply the three-pronged balancing test of Brown to the circumstances of the safety check roadblock here at issue. The checklist of thirteen items quoted in Cloukey, 486 A.2d at 146, from State v. Deskins, 234 Kan. 529, 541, 673 P.2d 1174, 1185 (1983), is nothing more than an identification of factual circumstances that may in varying degrees have bearing on making that balance in a particular case. Consideration of all the circumstances of the roadblock involved in this case persuades us that it passes constitutional muster.

In weighing the gravity of the public concern served by a roadblock and the degree to which it advances the public interest, we examine "the societal interest in dealing with the issue effectively, the availability of less intrusive means to accomplish the objective and the efficacy of the method chosen." State v. Sherburne, 571 A.2d at 1184. Our cases have consistently emphasized that the State's vital interest in the health, safety, and welfare of its citizens justifies roadblocks designed to enforce motor vehicle safety laws and to prevent traffic accidents. See id. at 1188. The public is best served by a regime that deters drivers from traveling in unsafe vehicles and identifies safety defects before vehicles are involved in accidents. See State v. Cloukey, 486 A.2d at 146-47. We have never required the State to show conclusively that the means the police choose to check for unsafe vehicles is the best of all possible choices. See State v. McMahon, 557 A.2d at 1325-26. Because the officer's goal in setting up the roadblock in the case at bar was only to make a visual check of vehicles for safety violations and not to check drivers' licenses and registrations, the method chosen was speedy and at the same time effective. The officer conducted his check during the daytime, on a well-lit, flat stretch of road with visibility of 100 to 150 yards in each direction. He stopped vehicles and checked their headlights, plate lights, tires, and inspection and registration stickers. The officer did not request licenses and registrations except in those instances where the vehicle had an expired sticker. We cannot think of a less intrusive and more effective method of checking for all of these violations at the same time.

Defendant has not demonstrated that the minimal discretion exercised by this officer in conducting a roadblock at which drivers were not asked to show their licenses or registrations was a severe interference with the motorists' liberty interest that automatically tipped the balance against its reasonableness. The officer's safety check took only 1 1/2 to 2 minutes. If the line grew to seven or eight vehicles, he waved all of them through. If he found a vehicle that had a faulty headlight or needed air in its tires, the officer merely warned the driver of the problem and did not issue a citation. The officer also testified that he had conducted this kind of safety roadblock for the four years he had been on the force and that he knew that other state police officers conducted the same type of roadblock in other parts of the state. Without endorsing the proposition that the historical fact of an established police practice always demonstrates its reasonableness, we cannot find that the state police policy of allowing individual officers to conduct this sort of minimally intrusive safety check is unreasonable. The known procedure for conducting these checks worked as a limit on Officer Curtis's discretion. In these circumstances the absence of supervisory personnel in the planning of this specific safety check does not render the limited operation unreasonable. See State v. Cloukey, 486 A.2d at 146.

The court's "determination that the roadblock was conducted reasonably was based on competent evidence and does not amount to clear error." State v. Sherburne, 571 A.2d at 1185 (citing State v. Reeves, 499 A.2d 130, 132 (Me.1985)). Based on the uncontradicted testimony of Officer Curtis, the court was justified in finding that this safety check roadblock effectively promoted the important public interest of highway safety and outweighed the minimal intrusion on individual liberty. See State v. Cloukey, 486 A.2d at 147.

Since the safety check roadblock was constitutionally reasonable, there is no question that the officer was justified in stopping defendant's truck and asking him for his license. The officer reasonably inferred from the switch in drivers within sight of the roadblock that the original driver was either intoxicated or under suspension and did not want to risk being caught by the police he saw ahead. In the circumstances, the change of drivers objectively suggests defendant's consciousness of guilt. Defendant's action in relinquishing the wheel in advance of a legal roadblock gave rise to a reasonable, articulable suspicion of criminal conduct that amply justified the investigative stop. See State v. Griffin, 459 A.2d 1086, 1090 (Me.1983).

The entry is:

Judgment affirmed.

WATHEN, COLLINS and BRODY, JJ., concurring.

GLASSMAN, Justice, dissenting.

Because I conclude that the stop in the...