Pennsylvania DUI checkpoints: who may run one and what refusal costs

Section 6308(b) of the Vehicle Code, as last amended by Act 24 of 2003, gives an officer two separate triggers. One is reasonable suspicion that a Title 75 violation is occurring or has occurred. The other is being engaged in a systematic program of checking vehicles or drivers, which is the checkpoint. In either case the stated purposes are the same and they are documentary: checking the vehicle’s registration, proof of financial responsibility, vehicle identification number or engine number or the driver’s license, or securing such other information as the officer may reasonably believe necessary to enforce Title 75. Pennsylvania has no separate checkpoint statute with a written-plan requirement, no statutory publication schedule and no statutory maximum detention time. The controls come from the courts.

The controlling guidelines come from Commonwealth v. Tarbert, 535 A.2d 1035 (Pa. 1987) and Commonwealth v. Blouse, 611 A.2d 1177 (Pa. 1992), which the Supreme Court later described as adopting a set of guidelines to square roadside checkpoints with constitutional protections against unreasonable seizures. In practice a Pennsylvania checkpoint has to be brief and involve no physical search of the vehicle, motorists must have had advance notice through publicity and through visible warning at the site itself, the decision to hold the checkpoint and the choice of its time and place must be made by administrative or supervisory officials rather than by the officers working the road, the site must be selected on the basis of local experience showing a drunk driving problem at that location, and which vehicles get stopped must follow an objective standard fixed in advance rather than an officer’s on-the-spot choice.

Two decisions turned on who was standing at the checkpoint. In Commonwealth v. Marconi, No. 14 WAP 2011, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania affirmed suppression of evidence from a Forest County roadblock run by the county sheriff, holding that in the absence of express legislative authorization the general rule precludes sheriffs and their deputies from independently establishing and conducting sobriety checkpoints. The court reasoned that suspicionless stops at sobriety checkpoints are plainly investigatory and that a sheriff’s common law arrest powers do not supply investigatory authority the General Assembly never granted.

The second is more consequential for the multi-municipality DUI task forces that run most checkpoints in the Pittsburgh and Philadelphia suburbs. In Commonwealth v. Hlubin, No. 56 WAP 2017, decided 31 May 2019, a checkpoint in Robinson Township was staffed by the West Hills DUI Task Force, including a sergeant whose primary jurisdiction was Moon Township. The Supreme Court held that section 8953(b) of the Municipal Police Jurisdiction Act, 42 Pa.C.S. §§ 8951 to 8954, permits a municipal officer to exercise police powers outside his primary jurisdiction only where one of the six exceptions in § 8953(a) applies, that no exception applied, and that the task force was not authorized by a joint agreement compliant with the Intergovernmental Cooperation Act, 53 Pa.C.S. §§ 2301 to 2317. All evidence gathered at the checkpoint against Hlubin was ordered suppressed.

Your obligations at the cones are ordinary Vehicle Code obligations. Under 75 Pa.C.S. § 6308(a) you must stop on the officer’s request or signal and, on request, exhibit the registration card, driver’s license and information relating to financial responsibility, and write your name in the officer’s presence if asked to establish identity. Refusing carries a $25 fine as a summary offense under 75 Pa.C.S. § 6502(a), because § 6308(e) grades only the subsection (d) records offenses as misdemeanors. Turning away before the checkpoint is not itself an offense under Title 75, but a driver who commits a Vehicle Code violation while doing it, an illegal U-turn or crossing a solid line, gives the officer independent reasonable suspicion under § 6308(b).

Chemical testing follows arrest, not the initial stop. 75 Pa.C.S. § 1547(a) deems every person who drives, operates or is in actual physical control of a vehicle in Pennsylvania to have consented to one or more chemical tests of breath or blood where the officer has reasonable grounds to believe the person was driving in violation of § 3802, § 1543(b)(1.1) or § 3808(a)(2). Refusal after arrest under § 1547(b)(1) means no test is conducted but PennDOT suspends the operating privilege for 12 months, or 18 months where the person has already had a suspension under that subsection or has previously been sentenced for a § 3802 offense, a former § 3731 offense or an equivalent. Section 1547(b)(2) requires the officer to tell you both that the privilege will be suspended and that a restoration fee of up to $2,000 applies, and that refusing breath testing exposes you to the enhanced penalties in § 3804(c) on a conviction under § 3802(a)(1). Section 1547(b)(3) preserves the usual license suspension appeal to the court of common pleas.

The offenses the checkpoint is looking for are graded by number. 75 Pa.C.S. § 3802(a)(1) covers general impairment with no reading at all, § 3802(a)(2) covers a blood or breath alcohol concentration of at least 0.08 percent but less than 0.10 percent within two hours of driving, § 3802(b) covers the high rate tier of at least 0.10 percent but less than 0.16 percent, and § 3802(c) covers the highest rate tier of 0.16 percent or higher. Section 3802(d)(1) separately prohibits driving with any amount of a Schedule I controlled substance in the blood, which is why a checkpoint stop can end in a charge with no alcohol involved.

§ 6502(a) plus costs, cited into the magisterial district court. § 1547(b)(1)(i), or 18 months under § 1547(b)(1)(ii) where there is a prior refusal suspension or a prior sentence under § 3802 or former § 3731, and faces a restoration fee of up to $2,000; that suspension is imposed by PennDOT on the officer’s notice and is appealable to the court of common pleas under § 1547(b)(3). Refusal of breath testing also triggers the enhanced sentencing in § 3804(c) on a conviction under § 3802(a)(1).

Where the checkpoint itself was unlawful, the remedy is a motion to suppress: the Supreme Court affirmed suppression on that basis in Commonwealth v. Marconi, where a sheriff ran the roadblock, and ordered suppression in Commonwealth v. Hlubin, where municipal officers worked outside their primary jurisdiction without an Intergovernmental Cooperation Act joint agreement.