Missouri DUI Checkpoints: Constitutional, With One Statutory Ban

Section 304.152 was enacted by S.B. 282 and took effect on August 28, 2013. Its three subsections do very different jobs. Subsection 1 opens "Notwithstanding any provision of the law to the contrary" and forbids any Missouri law enforcement agency from establishing a checkpoint or roadblock pattern based on a particular vehicle type, calling out motorcycle-only checkpoints by name, which is what the bill was aimed at. Subsection 2 carves out the one vehicle-type checkpoint that remains legal: a pattern that only stops and checks commercial motor vehicles as defined in Mo. Rev. Stat. § 301.010. Subsection 3 then makes the limit of the statute explicit, saying it shall not be construed to restrict any other lawful checkpoint or roadblock established and operated in accordance with the United States Constitution and the Constitution of Missouri. That last clause is why a Missouri sobriety checkpoint is a constitutional-law question rather than a statutory one, and why the operative standard is the reasonableness requirement of Mo. Const. art. I, § 15 alongside the Fourth Amendment. Missouri has no statutory rule on advance publicity, supervisory approval, the sequence of vehicles stopped, checkpoint duration, or signage. Those come from agency policy and from case law, not from the Revised Statutes.

What the statutes do supply is proof that the Legislature accepts checkpoints as a Missouri enforcement tool. Mo. Rev. Stat. § 590.650.8 says a peace officer who stops a driver "pursuant to a lawfully conducted sobriety check point or road block" is exempt from the § 590.650.2 reporting duty that otherwise applies to every vehicle stop, covering the driver's race, the reason for the stop, whether a search was conducted and consented to, and the location. The practical effect is that checkpoint stops do not appear in the Attorney General's annual vehicle stops analysis, which agencies must file by March 1 and the Attorney General must publish by June 1 under § 590.650.3 and § 590.650.4. Mo. Rev. Stat. § 577.020.1(5) is the second acknowledgement: a person under twenty-one who "has been stopped at a sobriety checkpoint or roadblock" and whom the officer has reasonable grounds to believe has a blood alcohol content of two-hundredths of one percent or more is deemed to have consented to a chemical test.

At the checkpoint itself, the implied consent scheme in § 577.020 governs. Subsection 1 deems every person operating a vehicle on Missouri public highways to have consented to chemical testing of breath, blood, saliva or urine in the listed circumstances, and subsection 2 limits it to no more than two tests arising from the same stop, detention, arrest, incident or charge. Under § 577.020.5 you may have your own physician, technician, chemist or nurse administer an additional test at your own expense, and a failure to obtain that extra test does not keep the officer's test out of evidence. Section 577.020.7 permits videotaping of a chemical test or a field sobriety test and makes the recording admissible.

Refusal has a defined Missouri price. Under § 577.041.2 the officer's request must state the reasons for it and must warn that evidence of refusal may be used against you, and if you were driving, that your licence will be immediately revoked. Section 577.041.3 gives you twenty minutes to attempt to contact an attorney, after which continued refusal is deemed a refusal. Section 302.574.1 then requires the officer to serve the revocation notice in person, take the licence, and issue a temporary permit valid for fifteen days along with notice of the right to file a petition for review. Section 302.574.3 sets the revocation at one year, and § 302.574.7 blocks reinstatement until the driver completes a substance abuse traffic offender program under § 302.010. Worth reading closely: the list in § 577.041.1 of situations in which refusal evidence is admissible covers arrest, detention under § 577.020.1(2), and stops under § 577.020.1(3) or (4), and does not name the checkpoint stop in subdivision (5).

The underlying offenses are in the same chapter. Driving with excessive blood alcohol content under § 577.012.1(1) is set at eight-hundredths of one percent by weight, dropping to four one-hundredths for a commercial motor vehicle under § 577.012.1(2), measured under § 577.012.2 in grams of alcohol per one hundred milliliters of blood or two hundred ten liters of breath. A first offense is a class B misdemeanor under § 577.012.3(1), rising to a class A misdemeanor for a prior offender and a class E felony for a persistent offender.

You may be stopped at a Missouri checkpoint without any individualised suspicion, and there is no Missouri statute permitting you to turn away or refuse to enter the lane once you are in it. Refusing the chemical test triggers an administrative revocation, not a criminal charge: the officer serves notice under Mo. Rev. 7 conditions reinstatement on completing a substance abuse traffic offender program. 500. 1. 1(3), a class A misdemeanor for a prior offender and a class E felony for a persistent offender. 6 places the burden of persuasion on the state. 2.