Pennsylvania State Police and environmental inspectors set up a roadblock into a landfill to inspect commercial trucks. In defendant’s truck they found some beer, and he was charged with DWI and “unlawful activities.” The stop and inspect of defendant’s truck was valid under Burger. Commonwealth v. Maguire, 2017 PA Super 351, 2017 Pa. Super. LEXIS 895 (Nov. 8, 2017) (dissent):
Applying the rationale set forth in Petroll, we conclude that the statute pursuant to which inspectors stopped Maguire’s vehicle, Section 4704(a)(2), easily satisfies the first prong of the Burger test. The Supreme Court in Petroll analyzed Section 4704(a)(2) and concluded that it is part of a statutory scheme that regulates the trucking industry and “advances a substantial government interest” of ensuring road safety. This statutory scheme also furthers the regulatory scheme by ensuring that individuals and businesses in the trucking industry meet the standards set by the Department of Transportation.
We also conclude that the systematic vehicle inspection program set forth in Section 4704(a)(2) meets the second prong of the Burger test by advancing the regulatory scheme. In particular, the systematic vehicle inspection program advances the government interest by removing unsafe vehicles from the roadways before accidents occur. Petroll 738 A.2d at 1003.
We conclude further that Section 4704(a)(2) satisfies the third prong, as the statute is sufficiently specific to provide a constitutionally adequate substitute to the warrant requirement, i.e., it advises the operator of a commercial vehicle that the regulatory search is being made pursuant to the law, it has a properly defined scope, and it limits the discretion of inspecting officers.
In particular, the statute limits the discretion of the inspecting officers by specifying the objects subject to the systematic inspection program—any vehicle, driver, documents, equipment, and load. It also identifies the purpose of the inspection—to ensure that vehicles meet established regulatory standards.
Thus, we conclude that this statute, on its face, is “sufficiently comprehensive and defined” so that a commercial truck driver is informed that his truck may be subject to periodic administrative inspections undertaken to ensure that the truck complies with DOT regulations and is road-safe. Burger, 482 U.S. at 703; see Petroll, 738 A.2d at 1004.
Trooper Beaver’s uncontradicted testimony at the suppression hearing supports this conclusion as it provided an understanding of the limits on the system of inspection and the lack of discretion the inspectors had in selecting which trucks to inspect. Trooper Beaver testified that the PSP and the DEP scheduled the instant inspection at least a month prior to the inspection at the Clinton County Landfill. He further testified that, as permitted in the statute, it was only the PSP and DEP administrative inspectors who conducted the inspections. He also testified to the limited scope of his inspection. Specifically, he testified that he conducted a “level two inspection,” which entailed a walk-around inspection of the truck’s “[l]ights, horn, wipers, the tires, the condition of the tires, the tires’ inflation, whether there [are] any flat tires, the wheel condition, the safety inspection[,]” as well as Maguire’s documents. N.T., 3/14/16, at 10.
Trooper Beaver also described the process by which the Team selected the trucks to inspect. Simply, if an inspector was available when the truck arrived at the landfill, one of the inspectors inspected it. If the inspectors were unavailable because they were inspecting other trucks, the truck was not inspected. We find that this system for selecting trucks to inspect sufficiently limits the discretion of the inspectors and meets the third element of Burger.
For the foregoing reasons, we conclude that the administrative inspection at issue here satisfied the Burger test. Consequently, the trial court erred in suppressing the evidence obtained as a result of the warrantless administrative inspection. Burger, 482 U.S. at 716 (holding that a valid administrative search without a warrant that uncovers evidence of a crime does not violate the Fourth Amendment.).
by John Wesley Hall
Criminal Defense Lawyer and
Search and seizure law consultant
Little Rock, Arkansas
Contact: forhall @ aol.com / The Book www.johnwesleyhall.com
"If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. It isn't, and they don't." —Me
"Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well." –Josh Billings (pseudonym of Henry Wheeler Shaw), Josh Billings on Ice, and Other Things (1868) (erroneously attributed to Robert Louis Stevenson, among others)
“I am still learning.” —Domenico Giuntalodi (but misattributed to Michelangelo Buonarroti (common phrase throughout 1500's)).
"Love work; hate mastery over others; and avoid intimacy with the government."
—Shemaya, in the Thalmud
"It is a pleasant world we live in, sir, a very pleasant world. There are bad people in it, Mr. Richard, but if there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers."
—Charles Dickens, “The Old Curiosity Shop ... With a Frontispiece. From a Painting by Geo. Cattermole, Etc.” 255 (1848)
"A system of law that not only makes certain conduct criminal, but also lays down rules for the conduct of the authorities, often becomes complex in its application to individual cases, and will from time to time produce imperfect results, especially if one's attention is confined to the particular case at bar. Some criminals do go free because of the necessity of keeping government and its servants in their place. That is one of the costs of having and enforcing a Bill of Rights. This country is built on the assumption that the cost is worth paying, and that in the long run we are all both freer and safer if the Constitution is strictly enforced."
—Williams
v. Nix, 700 F. 2d 1164, 1173 (8th Cir. 1983) (Richard Sheppard Arnold,
J.), rev'd Nix v. Williams, 467 US. 431 (1984).
"The criminal goes free, if he must, but it is the law that sets him free. Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws,
or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence." —Mapp
v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 659 (1961).
"Any costs the exclusionary rule are costs imposed directly by the Fourth Amendment."
—Yale Kamisar, 86 Mich.L.Rev. 1, 36 n. 151 (1987).
"There have been powerful hydraulic pressures throughout our history that
bear heavily on the Court to water down constitutional guarantees and give the
police the upper hand. That hydraulic pressure has probably never been greater
than it is today."
— Terry
v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 39 (1968) (Douglas, J., dissenting).
"The great end, for which men entered into society, was to secure their
property."
—Entick
v. Carrington, 19 How.St.Tr. 1029, 1066, 95 Eng. Rep. 807 (C.P. 1765)
"It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have
frequently been forged in controversies involving not very nice people. And
so, while we are concerned here with a shabby defrauder, we must deal with his
case in the context of what are really the great themes expressed by the Fourth
Amendment."
—United
States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56, 69 (1950) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting)
"The course of true law pertaining to searches and seizures, as enunciated
here, has not–to put it mildly–run smooth."
—Chapman
v. United States, 365 U.S. 610, 618 (1961) (Frankfurter, J., concurring).
"A search is a search, even if it happens to disclose nothing but the
bottom of a turntable."
—Arizona
v. Hicks, 480 U.S. 321, 325 (1987)
"For the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly
exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth
Amendment protection. ... But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in
an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected."
—Katz
v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351 (1967)
“Experience should teach us to be most on guard to
protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born
to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded
rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men
of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”
—United
States v. Olmstead, 277 U.S. 438, 479 (1925) (Brandeis, J., dissenting)
“Liberty—the freedom from unwarranted
intrusion by government—is as easily lost through insistent nibbles by
government officials who seek to do their jobs too well as by those whose purpose
it is to oppress; the piranha can be as deadly as the shark.”
—United
States v. $124,570, 873 F.2d 1240, 1246 (9th Cir. 1989)
"You can't always get what you want /
But if you try sometimes / You just might find / You get what you need."
—Mick Jagger & Keith Richards
"In Germany, they first came for the communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for
the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Catholic. Then they came
for me–and by that time there was nobody left to speak up."
—Martin Niemöller (1945) [he served seven years in a concentration
camp]
“You know, most men would get discouraged by
now. Fortunately for you, I am not most men!”
---Pepé Le Pew
"The point of the Fourth Amendment, which often is not grasped by zealous officers,
is not that it denies law enforcement the support of the usual inferences which
reasonable men draw from evidence. Its protection consists in requiring that
those inferences be drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being
judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting
out crime."
—Johnson
v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 13-14 (1948)