South Dakota Roadblocks: Authorized by Statute Since 1961, With 100-Yard Visibility and Two Warning Lights

The authorizing language is broad and it is not written around drunk driving. SDCL 32-33-10 authorizes officers to establish, in their respective jurisdictions or in other jurisdictions within the state, temporary roadblocks on the highways of this state for the purpose of identifying drivers, and apprehending persons wanted for violation of the laws of this state, or any other state, or of the United States. Identifying drivers is stated as a purpose in its own right, which is why the statute supports impaired-driving operations, licence and registration checks and fugitive apprehension alike. It also expressly permits an officer to work a roadblock outside their own jurisdiction, which is what makes multi-agency saturation operations lawful.

SDCL 32-33-11 defines the device rather than the operation: a temporary roadblock means any structure, device, or means used by officers for the purpose of controlling all traffic through a point on the highway whereby all vehicles may be slowed or stopped. The words all traffic and all vehicles matter, because they describe a stop-everyone operation rather than selective stops, and there is nothing in the chapter authorizing an officer to pick individual cars out of the flow at a roadblock.

SDCL 32-33-12 is the operational rulebook and it is short. For the purpose of warning and protecting the traveling public, the minimum requirements are that the roadblock be established at a point on the highway clearly visible at a distance of not less than one hundred yards in either direction; that at least one flashing amber light be placed at the side of the roadway not less than one hundred yards out, clearly visible to oncoming traffic; and that a flashing red light be displayed at the roadblock point itself, which may be one attached to a vehicle but must be visible to oncoming traffic from not less than one hundred yards. Read the opening clause carefully, though: those minimums apply if time and circumstances allow. That qualifier, unchanged since SL 1975, ch 212, means the three signalling requirements are not absolute preconditions to a lawful roadblock.

What the chapter does not contain is as important as what it does. There is no statutory requirement of advance publicity, no requirement that a supervisor rather than a field officer select the site, no neutral formula for which vehicles are stopped, no maximum detention time, and no requirement to publish results. SDCL 32-33-14 preserves the position by providing that nothing in 32-33-10 to 32-33-13 limits or encroaches on the existing authority of South Dakota law enforcement officers in the performance of their duties involving traffic control. Any constraint beyond the four sections comes from constitutional law, not from the South Dakota Codified Laws.

At the roadblock itself, two testing provisions govern what an officer may ask for. SDCL 32-23-1.2 requires every person operating a vehicle that has been involved in an accident, or that is operated in violation of any provision of chapter 32-23, to submit to a breath test on an officer's request. Neither trigger is satisfied by merely arriving at a roadblock, so a preliminary breath test at a checkpoint rests on something the officer observes there. SDCL 32-23-10 supplies implied consent to the withdrawal of blood or other bodily substance and chemical analysis, but its second sentence ties the officer's power to require it to a point subsequent to the arrest of the operator for a violation of SDCL 32-23-1. The offence threshold in SDCL 32-23-1(1) is 0.08 percent or more by weight of alcohol in the blood, with separate under-the-influence routes at subdivisions (2) through (5) covering marijuana, prescription drugs taken to a degree rendering a person incapable of safely driving, and inhaled substances under SDCL 22-42-15.

Drivers should also know the licence consequence of refusal, which is administrative rather than criminal. Under SDCL 32-23-11 a person who refuses chemical analysis and wants to contest revocation must request a hearing under chapter 1-26 within one hundred twenty days of arrest, and if the secretary of public safety finds the officer complied with the law and the refusal was made, the secretary shall revoke the licence and any nonresident operating privileges for one year. SDCL 32-23-10.1 makes the refusal itself admissible in evidence at a later trial for driving under the influence.

The offense specific to roadblocks is SDCL 32-33-13: any person who proceeds or travels through a roadblock without subjecting himself to the traffic control so established is guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor. Under SDCL 22-6-2 a Class 1 misdemeanor carries up to one year of imprisonment in a county jail or a two thousand dollar fine, or both, so running a South Dakota roadblock is punished four times as heavily as failing to stop at an officer's signal, which SDCL 32-33-18 grades as a Class 2 misdemeanor with a possible one-year licence revocation.

3, moving from a Class 1 misdemeanor to a Class 6 felony where the driving creates an inherent risk of death or serious bodily injury. A driver arrested at a roadblock for driving under the influence faces the graduated scheme in chapter 32-23, and refusing the chemical test triggers a one-year licence revocation under SDCL 32-23-11 that is contested through a chapter 1-26 administrative hearing requested within one hundred twenty days of arrest, not in the criminal case.