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Police checkpoints on cars could be illegal without
search warrants. In fact, the mere act of a policeman to stop you
while driving could be challenged as a violation of your
constitutional right to illegal seizure and searches.
This is the conclusion one
invariably makes reading the unanimous decision June 18 of the
United States Supreme Court which said a passenger as well as a
driver has the right to challenge the legality of a police
officer’s decision to stop a car. (See decisions, Brendlin v.
California, US Supreme Court website).
By the way, the US Supreme Court
posts its decisions on the web faster than our Supreme Court does.
Maybe, it is the Filipino time. The US Supreme Court also makes
shorter and more elegant decisions.
Here in the Philippines, the
Supreme Court has allowed checkpoints but subject to certain
conditions such as prominent signage, proper identification of the
checkpoint officers and presence of a responsible officer on the
scene.
But such conditions are honored
more in breach than in practice. I should know. I have been into
checkpoints before and the experience can be scary, especially in
the middle of the night and more so, since both law enforcers and
criminals (like holduppers, carjackers and guerrillas) wear the same
uniform and often look alike.
Three years ago, on the eve of a
my birthday, my car was stopped by a group of men wearing black
uniforms and armed to the teeth on N. Domingo Street in San Juan.
The men had black jackets which hid their nameplates—a violation
of the Philippine Supreme Court ruling. They were more intimidating
than polite. If I heard it right, they cocked their long firearms.
I refused to give my driver’s
license and demanded to read their nameplates. They were hesitant. I
demanded to know who their officer was. They were hesitant to
present him. I told them that bristling with high-powered firearms
doesn’t give them the right to intimidate innocent citizens.
Eventually, we agreed to go to the police headquarters because I had
demanded to see their commander. My car was boxed in, two cars of
policemen ahead of me and two cars behind me, lights blazing. When
we arrived at the police headquarters, the commander refused to come
down. He was asleep, I was told. “But you claimed you are on red
alert,” I protested. Someone called the commander. A mestizo-looking
guy in plain t-shirt (no nameplate) and short pants came down and
told me I could go.
The US Court’s June 18 ruling
came in the case of Mr. Bruce E. Brendlin, a passenger in a car that
was stopped by a deputy sheriff in Yuba City, California, on
November 27, 2001. The deputy found out that Brendlin was an
ex-convict who was wanted for violating his parole. An ensuing
search of the driver, the car and Brendlin turned up methamphetamine
(shabu).
Brendlin later pleaded guilty to
a drug charge and drew a four-year prison sentence. He appealed his
conviction alleging that the evidence of drugs found on him resulted
from an illegal search and should have been suppressed because of
the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable search and
seizure.
The California Supreme Court
found that, constitutionally speaking, only the driver had been
“seized” by the stop, and that therefore Mr. Brendlin had no
basis for challenging the search that turned up the drugs. The State
of California made that argument again when the case was heard
before Federal Supreme Court April 23.
Brendlin’s lawyer, Elizabeth M.
Campbell, contended that when an officer makes a traffic stop, “he
seizes not only the driver of the car, but also the car, and every
person and every thing in that car.”
The justices agreed. “When
police make a traffic stop, a passenger in the car, like the driver,
is seized for Fourth Amendment purposes and so may challenge the
stop’s constitutionality,” the Supreme Court said. Justice David
Souter wrote for the high court.
Most federal and state courts
have ruled that passengers in a traffic stop are also “seized,”
legally speaking, and thus may challenge the legality of the stop.
However, the state courts in Washington, Colorado and California,
had held otherwise. Until the June 18 ruling.
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