Mississippi Roadblocks: No Checkpoint Statute, One Rule That Assumes Them

Start with the search results, because the absence is the finding. A full-text search of the Mississippi Code 1972 Annotated returns zero sections for sobriety, zero for safety checkpoint and zero for driver license checkpoint. The word checkpoint appears once, in Miss. Code Ann. Section 49-15-31, a marine resources provision that has nothing to do with roads. The word roadblock appears in one section only: Section 63-15-4, the compulsory liability insurance card statute. Mississippi checkpoints therefore do not rest on an enabling act the way, say, a permit scheme would. The Legislature has legislated around them rather than for them.

What Section 63-15-4(3) does supply is a statutory description of what a lawful Mississippi roadblock looks like. The subsection opens on stopping a motor vehicle at a roadblock where all passing motorists are checked as a method to enforce traffic laws. That is the only definition of a roadblock anywhere in the Mississippi traffic code, and it carries the feature that matters most to a driver: every passing vehicle, not a selection. A stop that picks out particular cars is not the thing the subsection is describing.

The subsection then does real work. At such a roadblock, or on any other stop for a statutory violation, an officer authorised to issue traffic citations must verify that the insurance card required by Section 63-15-4 is in the vehicle or displayed as an electronic image on a phone or other device. Immediately afterwards comes the limit: no driver shall be stopped or detained solely for the purpose of verifying that the vehicle is covered by liability insurance in the amounts required under Section 63-15-3(j), unless the stop is part of such roadblock. In other words, in Mississippi the all-motorists roadblock is the one setting in which an insurance-only stop is permitted at all.

The third sentence of subsection (3) is a safe harbour worth knowing. If the officer uses the vehicle insurance verification system created by Section 63-16-3 and gets a response confirming that the owner carries liability insurance at the Section 63-15-3(j) limits, the officer shall not issue a citation under the section, notwithstanding any failure by the owner or operator to display a card. Producing nothing is not automatically a ticket when the state database answers for you.

Subsection (6) is a rare piece of Mississippi drafting about phones. No law enforcement officer may access any function, feature or other electronic image on a person cellular phone or other electronic device when enforcing the section, except for the electronic image of an insurance card shown to the officer. Handing over a phone to show a digital insurance card at a roadblock does not open the device to anything else.

Breath testing at a Mississippi roadblock is governed by the Implied Consent Law in Chapter 11 of Title 63 rather than by any checkpoint rule. Under Miss. Code Ann. Section 63-11-5(1), a person who operates a motor vehicle on the public roads is deemed to have consented to a chemical test of breath, blood or urine, but subsection (1)(b) requires the test to be administered at the direction of an authorized officer who has reasonable grounds and probable cause to believe the person was driving under the influence. Being one of the cars in a line at a roadblock is not itself that ground. Section 63-11-5(3) also requires the officer to warn the driver, before a refusal counts, that failure to submit results in suspension of driving privileges for ninety (90) days where there is no prior conviction under Section 63-11-30, or one (1) year where there is.

The exposure at a Mississippi roadblock is mostly documentary. Failure to have the insurance card in the vehicle, or to display it as an electronic image, is a misdemeanor under Miss. Code Ann. 00) and suspension of driving privilege for one (1) year, or until the owner shows proof of compliant liability insurance and has paid the fines, assessments and Department of Public Safety reinstatement fees. The judge must determine whether the defendant is indigent and, if so, must authorise reinstatement on proof of insurance subject to a payment plan.

Under Section 63-15-4(5), if the owner shows at the hearing or on payment that the insurance was in effect at the time of citation, the case is dismissed with prejudice and all court costs are waived. Fraudulent use of an insurance card is punished under Section 97-7-10. Refusing a chemical test after the Section 63-11-5(3) warning brings a ninety-day suspension, or one year with a prior conviction under Section 63-11-30. Driving away from a roadblock is a different matter entirely: under Miss. Code Ann. 00) or six (6) months in the county jail.