Don't Go to Indiana

The Vigo County prosecutor’s office, the Terre Haute Police Department and Vigo County Sheriff’s Department will be conducting intermittent driver’s license checks at an undisclosed location in Vigo County.

When I hear that Indiana police are conducting “driver’s license checks”, my constitutional spidey-sense goes off. Afterall, these are the folks who brought us the drug checkpoint. And when that got overruled by the Supreme Court, they came out with the similar, but more sinister “fake drug checkpoint.”

And just when I’m getting ready to connect the dots, the Tribune-Star does it for me:

The checkpoint is also known as a highway interdiction operation, something that has been challenged in courts on the grounds that it may violate the Fourth Amendment prohibition against illegal search and seizure.

So at least we can agree that this is about drug interdiction rather than driver’s licenses. But the Tribune-Star is a bit off on the caselaw. The above quote should read:

The checkpoint is also known as a highway interdiction operation, something that has been overruled by the Supreme Court on the grounds that it does violate the Fourth Amendment prohibition against illegal search and seizure.

Though technically a win for the 4th Amendment, City of Indianapolis v. Edmond has a loophole in that it only prohibits checkpoints implemented for the “primary purpose” of drug interdiction. That’s why police can set up checkpoints on the pretext of checking driver’s licenses, and then proceed to march drug-sniffing dogs around your car in circles as you fumble for your documents.

Thanks to the Court’s recent decision in Illinois v. Caballes, dog-sniffs are impossible to challenge on 4th Amendment grounds if administered during the course of an otherwise legitimate law-enforcement activity, so these thinly-veiled drug checkpoints will be hard to challenge.

For that matter, I’m not sure we should even push this issue given our current Court’s attitude towards the 4th Amendment.

Instead, let’s just stay the hell out of Indiana.