Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> Fourth Amendment

Criminal Law

: Fourth Amendment

Two roadblock cases: Sobriety checkpoint stops potential robber; park "road audit" caught DWI

By John Wesley Hall, Jr.

Stop of car at a sobriety checkpoint was validly extended because the car matched a BOLO from an hour earlier about a robbery. United States v. Jackson, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 119622 (S.D. W.Va. December 23, 2009): In considering the totality of the circumstances, this Court has little difficulty finding this initial stop was constitutional. The officers knew there was a recent armed robbery in close proximity to the checkpoint, the suspects were a white female and black male, and they were the only couple fitting that description that had gone through the checkpoint. Although Corporal Poff was mistaken that the robbery had "just occurred," the Court finds that even if he had known it had occurred approximately an hour earlier, it was still sufficiently close in time that it would not prohibit the initial investigatory stop...continue to full post

Full post as published by Fourth Amendment on December 30, 2009 (boomark / email).