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"More boondoggle than bonanza: Southbound checkpoints face Fourth Amendment challenges"

By John Wesley Hall, Jr.

On Grits for Breakfast yesterday: More boondoggle than bonanza: Southbound checkpoints face Fourth Amendment challenges, about proposed Texas legislation for using checkpoints as revenue generators, hoping to cut into Mexican drug cartel profits: Rob Kepple of the Texas District and County Attorneys Association told the Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee that, under existing Fourth Amendment jurisprudence in Texas, it's "not a viable policy" to use southbound checkpoints to "bootstrap our way" into expanded asset seizures or to check immigration status. Ouch! The most problematic question, said Kepple is whether DPS can do its own checkpoints aimed at searching for money, guns, drugs, stolen cars, etc., as opposed to checking for drivers licenses and liability insurance? Courts look at the intent of the checkpoint, he said, and if the intent is to generate forfeiture revenue that probably won't cut it...continue to full post

Full post as published by Fourth Amendment on March 31, 2011 (boomark / email).