ILLINOIS v. LIDSTER

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419 OCTOBER TERM, 2003
Syllabus
ILLINOIS v. LIDSTER
certiorari to the supreme court of illinois
No. 02–1060. Argued November 5, 2003—Decided January 13, 2004
Police set up a highway checkpoint to obtain information from motorists
about a hit-and-run accident occurring about one week earlier at the
same location and time of night. Officers stopped each vehicle for 10 to
15 seconds, asked the occupants whether they had seen anything happen
there the previous weekend, and handed each driver a flyer describing
and requesting information about the accident. As respondent Lidster
approached, his minivan swerved, nearly hitting an officer. The officer
smelled alcohol on Lidster’s breath. Another officer administered a so-
briety test and then arrested Lidster. He was convicted in Illinois
state court of driving under the influence of alcohol. He challenged his
arrest and conviction on the ground that the government obtained evi-
dence through use of a checkpoint stop that violated the Fourth Amend-
ment. The trial court rejected that challenge, but the state appellate
court reversed. The State Supreme Court agreed, holding that, in light
of Indianapolis v. Edmond, 531 U. S. 32, the stop was unconstitutional.
Held: The checkpoint stop did not violate the Fourth Amendment.
Pp. 423–428.
(a) Edmond does not govern the outcome of this case. In Edmond,
this Court held that, absent special circumstances, the Fourth Amend-
ment forbids police to make stops without individualized suspicion at a
checkpoint set up primarily for general “crime control” purposes. 531
U. S., at 41, 44. Specifically, the checkpoint in Edmond was designed
to ferret out drug crimes committed by the motorists themselves.
Here, the stop’s primary law enforcement purpose was not to determine
whether a vehicle’s occupants were committing a crime, but to ask the
occupants, as members of the public, for help in providing information
about a crime in all likelihood committed by others. Edmond’s lan-
guage, as well as its context, makes clear that an information-seeking
stop’s constitutionality was not then before this Court. Pp. 423–424.
(b) Nor does the Fourth Amendment require courts to apply an
Edmond-type rule of automatic unconstitutionality to such stops. The
fact that they normally lack individualized suspicion cannot by itself
determine the constitutional outcome, as the Fourth Amendment does
not treat a motorist’s car as his castle, see, e. g., New York v. Class, 475
U. S. 106, 112–113, and special law enforcement concerns will sometimes

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420 ILLINOIS v. LIDSTER
Syllabus
justify highway stops without individualized suspicion, see, e. g., Michi-
gan Dept. of State Police v. Sitz, 496 U. S. 444. Moreover, the context
here (seeking information from the public) is one in which, by definition,
the concept of individualized suspicion has little role to play, and an
information-seeking stop is not the kind of event that involves suspicion,
or lack thereof, of the relevant individual. In addition, information-
seeking highway stops are less likely to provoke anxiety or to prove
intrusive, since they are likely brief, the questions asked are not de-
signed to elicit self-incriminating information, and citizens will often
react positively when police ask for help. The law also ordinarily per-
mits police to seek the public’s voluntary cooperation in a criminal inves-
tigation. That the importance of soliciting the public’s assistance is off-
set to some degree by the need to stop a motorist—which amounts to a
“seizure” in Fourth Amendment terms, e. g., Edmond, supra, at 40—is
not important enough to justify an Edmond-type rule here. Finally,
such a rule is not needed to prevent an unreasonable proliferation of
police checkpoints. Practical considerations of limited police resources
and community hostility to traffic tieups seem likely to inhibit any such
proliferation, and the Fourth Amendment’s normal insistence that the
stop be reasonable in context will still provide an important legal limita-
tion on checkpoint use. Pp. 424–427.
(c) The checkpoint stop was constitutional. In judging its reason-
ableness, hence, its constitutionality, this Court looks to “the gravity of
the public concerns served by the seizure, the degree to which the sei-
zure advances the public interest, and the severity of the interference
with individual liberty.” Brown v. Texas, 443 U. S. 47, 51. The rele-
vant public concern was grave, as the police were investigating a crime
that had resulted in a human death, and the stop advanced this concern
to a significant degree given its timing and location. Most importantly,
the stops interfered only minimally with liberty of the sort the Fourth
Amendment seeks to protect. Viewed objectively, each stop required
only a brief wait in line and contact with police for only a few seconds.
Viewed subjectively, the systematic contact provided little reason for
anxiety or alarm, and there is no allegation that the police acted in a
discriminatory or otherwise unlawful manner. Pp. 427–428.
202 Ill. 2d 1, 779 N. E. 2d 855, reversed.
Breyer, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Rehnquist,
C. J., and O’Connor, Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas, JJ., joined, and in
which Stevens, Souter, and Ginsburg, JJ., joined as to Parts I and II.
Stevens, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, in
which Souter and Ginsburg, JJ., joined, post, p. 428.

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421 Cite as: 540 U. S. 419 (2004)
Opinion of the Court
Gary Feinerman, Solicitor General of Illinois, argued the
cause for petitioner. With him on the briefs were Lisa Mad-
igan, Attorney General, and Linda D. Woloshin, Lisa Anne
Hoffman, and Karen Kaplan, Assistant Attorneys General.
Patricia A. Millett argued the cause for the United States
as amicus curiae urging reversal. With her on the brief
were Solicitor General Olson, Acting Assistant Attorney
General Wray, Deputy Solicitor General Dreeben, and Patty
Merkamp Stemler.
Donald John Ramsell argued the cause and filed a brief
for respondent.*
Justice Breyer delivered the opinion of the Court.
This Fourth Amendment case focuses upon a highway
checkpoint where police stopped motorists to ask them for
information about a recent hit-and-run accident. We hold
that the police stops were reasonable, hence, constitutional.
*Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal were filed for the State of Ohio
et al. by Jim Petro, Attorney General of Ohio, Douglas R. Cole, State
Solicitor, and Robert C. Maier, Assistant Solicitor, Robert J. Spagnoletti,
Acting Corporation Counsel of the District of Columbia, and by the At-
torneys General for their respective jurisdictions as follows: William
H. Pryor, Jr., of Alabama, Terry Goddard of Arizona, M. Jane Brady of
Delaware, Steve Carter of Indiana, Thomas J. Miller of Iowa, G. Steven
Rowe of Maine, J. Joseph Curran, Jr., of Maryland, Mike Hatch of Minne-
sota, Mike McGrath of Montana, Brian Sandoval of Nevada, Peter Heed
of New Hampshire, W. A. Drew Edmondson of Oklahoma, Hardy Myers
of Oregon, D. Michael Fisher of Pennsylvania, Henry Dargan McMaster
of South Carolina, Lawrence E. Long of South Dakota, Greg Abbott of
Texas, Mark L. Shurtleff of Utah, William H. Sorrell of Vermont, Jerry
W. Kilgore of Virginia, and Iver A. Stridiron of the Virgin Islands; for the
Criminal Justice Legal Foundation by Kent S. Scheidegger and Charles L.
Hobson; and for the Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police et al. by James
G. Sotos.
Briefs of amici curiae urging affirmance were filed for the National
Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers et al. by Lawrence S. Lustberg,
Joshua L. Dratel, Steven R. Shapiro, and Harvey Grossman; and for the
National College for DUI Defense by Barry T. Simons and W. Troy
McKinney.

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422 ILLINOIS v. LIDSTER
Opinion of the Court
I
The relevant background is as follows: On Saturday, Au-
gust 23, 1997, just after midnight, an unknown motorist trav-
eling eastbound on a highway in Lombard, Illinois, struck
and killed a 70-year-old bicyclist. The motorist drove off
without identifying himself. About one week later at about
the same time of night and at about the same place, local
police set up a highway checkpoint designed to obtain more
information about the accident from the motoring public.
Police cars with flashing lights partially blocked the east-
bound lanes of the highway. The blockage forced traffic to
slow down, leading to lines of up to 15 cars in each lane. As
each vehicle drew up to the checkpoint, an officer would stop
it for 10 to 15 seconds, ask the occupants whether they had
seen anything happen there the previous weekend, and hand
each driver a flyer. The flyer said “ALERT . . . FATAL
HIT & RUN ACCIDENT” and requested “ASSISTANCE
IN IDENTIFYING THE VEHICLE AND DRIVER IN-
VOLVED IN THIS ACCIDENT WHICH KILLED A 70
YEAR OLD BICYCLIST.” App. 9.
Robert Lidster, the respondent, drove a minivan to-
ward the checkpoint. As he approached the checkpoint, his
van swerved, nearly hitting one of the officers. The officer
smelled alcohol on Lidster’s breath. He directed Lidster to
a side street where another officer administered a sobriety
test and then arrested Lidster. Lidster was tried and con-
victed in Illinois state court of driving under the influence
of alcohol.
Lidster challenged the lawfulness of his arrest and convic-
tion on the ground that the government had obtained much
of the relevant evidence through use of a checkpoint stop
that violated the Fourth Amendment. The trial court
rejected that challenge. But an Illinois appellate court
reached the opposite conclusion. 319 Ill. App. 3d 825, 747
N. E. 2d 419 (2001). The Illinois Supreme Court agreed

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Opinion of the Court
with the appellate court. It held (by a vote of 4 to 3) that
our decision in Indianapolis v. Edmond, 531 U. S. 32 (2000),
required it to find the stop unconstitutional. 202 Ill. 2d 1,
779 N. E. 2d 855 (2002).
Because lower courts have reached different conclusions
about this matter, we granted certiorari. See Burns v.
Commonwealth, 261 Va. 307, 541 S. E. 2d 872, cert. denied,
534 U. S. 1043 (2001) (finding similar checkpoint stop con-
stitutional). We now reverse the Illinois Supreme Court’s
determination.
II
The Illinois Supreme Court basically held that our deci-
sion in Edmond governs the outcome of this case. We do
not agree. Edmond involved a checkpoint at which police
stopped vehicles to look for evidence of drug crimes com-
mitted by occupants of those vehicles. After stopping a ve-
hicle at the checkpoint, police would examine (from outside
the vehicle) the vehicle’s interior; they would walk a drug-
sniffing dog around the exterior; and, if they found sufficient
evidence of drug (or other) crimes, they would arrest the
vehicle’s occupants. 531 U. S., at 35. We found that police
had set up this checkpoint primarily for general “crime con-
trol” purposes, i. e., “to detect evidence of ordinary criminal
wrongdoing.” Id., at 41. We noted that the stop was made
without individualized suspicion. And we held that the
Fourth Amendment forbids such a stop, in the absence of
special circumstances. Id., at 44.
The checkpoint stop here differs significantly from that in
Edmond. The stop’s primary law enforcement purpose was
not to determine whether a vehicle’s occupants were commit-
ting a crime, but to ask vehicle occupants, as members of the
public, for their help in providing information about a crime
in all likelihood committed by others. The police expected
the information elicited to help them apprehend, not the ve-
hicle’s occupants, but other individuals.

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Edmond’s language, as well as its context, makes clear
that the constitutionality of this latter, information-seeking
kind of stop was not then before the Court. Edmond refers
to the subject matter of its holding as “stops justified only
by the generalized and ever-present possibility that interro-
gation and inspection may reveal that any given motorist
has committed some crime.” Ibid. (emphasis added). We
concede that Edmond describes the law enforcement objec-
tive there in question as a “general interest in crime con-
trol,” but it specifies that the phrase “general interest in
crime control” does not refer to every “law enforcement” ob-
jective. Id., at 44, n. 1. We must read this and related gen-
eral language in Edmond as we often read general language
in judicial opinions—as referring in context to circumstances
similar to the circumstances then before the Court and not
referring to quite different circumstances that the Court was
not then considering.
Neither do we believe, Edmond aside, that the Fourth
Amendment would have us apply an Edmond-type rule of
automatic unconstitutionality to brief, information-seeking
highway stops of the kind now before us. For one thing, the
fact that such stops normally lack individualized suspicion
cannot by itself determine the constitutional outcome. As
in Edmond, the stop here at issue involves a motorist. The
Fourth Amendment does not treat a motorist’s car as his
castle. See, e. g., New York v. Class, 475 U. S. 106, 112–113
(1986); United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U. S. 543, 561
(1976). And special law enforcement concerns will some-
times justify highway stops without individualized suspicion.
See Michigan Dept. of State Police v. Sitz, 496 U. S. 444
(1990) (sobriety checkpoint); Martinez-Fuerte, supra (Border
Patrol checkpoint). Moreover, unlike Edmond, the context
here (seeking information from the public) is one in which,
by definition, the concept of individualized suspicion has little
role to play. Like certain other forms of police activity, say,

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Opinion of the Court
crowd control or public safety, an information-seeking stop
is not the kind of event that involves suspicion, or lack of
suspicion, of the relevant individual.
For another thing, information-seeking highway stops are
less likely to provoke anxiety or to prove intrusive. The
stops are likely brief. The police are not likely to ask ques-
tions designed to elicit self-incriminating information. And
citizens will often react positively when police simply ask
for their help as “responsible citizen[s]” to “give whatever
information they may have to aid in law enforcement.” Mi-
randa v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436, 477–478 (1966).
Further, the law ordinarily permits police to seek the vol-
untary cooperation of members of the public in the investiga-
tion of a crime. “[L]aw enforcement officers do not violate
the Fourth Amendment by merely approaching an individual
on the street or in another public place, by asking him if he
is willing to answer some questions, [or] by putting questions
to him if the person is willing to listen.” Florida v. Royer,
460 U. S. 491, 497 (1983). See also ALI, Model Code of
Pre-Arraignment Procedure § 110.1(1) (1975) (“[L]aw en-
forcement officer may . . . request any person to furnish infor-
mation or otherwise cooperate in the investigation or pre-
vention of crime”). That, in part, is because voluntary
requests play a vital role in police investigatory work. See,
e. g., Haynes v. Washington, 373 U. S. 503, 515 (1963) (“[I]n-
terrogation of witnesses . . . is undoubtedly an essential tool
in effective law enforcement”); U. S. Dept. of Justice, Eyewit-
ness Evidence: A Guide for Law Enforcement 14–15 (Oct.
1999) (instructing law enforcement to gather information
from witnesses near the scene).
The importance of soliciting the public’s assistance is offset
to some degree by the need to stop a motorist to obtain that
help—a need less likely present where a pedestrian, not a
motorist, is involved. The difference is significant in light
of our determinations that such an involuntary stop amounts

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Opinion of the Court
to a “seizure” in Fourth Amendment terms. E. g., Edmond,
531 U. S., at 40. That difference, however, is not important
enough to justify an Edmond-type rule here. After all, as
we have said, the motorist stop will likely be brief. Any
accompanying traffic delay should prove no more onerous
than many that typically accompany normal traffic conges-
tion. And the resulting voluntary questioning of a motorist
is as likely to prove important for police investigation as is
the questioning of a pedestrian. Given these considerations,
it would seem anomalous were the law (1) ordinarily to allow
police freely to seek the voluntary cooperation of pedestrians
but (2) ordinarily to forbid police to seek similar voluntary
cooperation from motorists.
Finally, we do not believe that an Edmond-type rule is
needed to prevent an unreasonable proliferation of police
checkpoints. Cf. 202 Ill. 2d, at 9–10, 779 N. E. 2d, at 859–
860 (expressing that concern). Practical considerations—
namely, limited police resources and community hostility to
related traffic tieups—seem likely to inhibit any such pro-
liferation. See Fell, Ferguson, Williams, & Fields, Why
Aren’t Sobriety Checkpoints Widely Adopted as an Enforce-
ment Strategy in the United States? 35 Accident Analysis &
Prevention 897 (Nov. 2003) (finding that sobriety checkpoints
are not more widely used due to the lack of police resources
and the lack of community support). And, of course, the
Fourth Amendment’s normal insistence that the stop be rea-
sonable in context will still provide an important legal lim-
itation on police use of this kind of information-seeking
checkpoint.
These considerations, taken together, convince us that an
Edmond-type presumptive rule of unconstitutionality does
not apply here. That does not mean the stop is automat-
ically, or even presumptively, constitutional. It simply
means that we must judge its reasonableness, hence, its con-
stitutionality, on the basis of the individual circumstances.
And as this Court said in Brown v. Texas, 443 U. S. 47, 51

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(1979), in judging reasonableness, we look to “the gravity of
the public concerns served by the seizure, the degree to
which the seizure advances the public interest, and the se-
verity of the interference with individual liberty.” See also
Sitz, 496 U. S., at 450–455 (balancing these factors in de-
termining reasonableness of a checkpoint stop); Martinez-
Fuerte, 428 U. S., at 556–564 (same).
III
We now consider the reasonableness of the checkpoint stop
before us in light of the factors just mentioned, an issue that,
in our view, has been fully argued here. See Brief for Peti-
tioner 14–18; Brief for Respondent 17–27. We hold that the
stop was constitutional.
The relevant public concern was grave. Police were in-
vestigating a crime that had resulted in a human death. No
one denies the police’s need to obtain more information at
that time. And the stop’s objective was to help find the per-
petrator of a specific and known crime, not of unknown
crimes of a general sort. Cf. Edmond, supra, at 44.
The stop advanced this grave public concern to a signifi-
cant degree. The police appropriately tailored their check-
point stops to fit important criminal investigatory needs.
The stops took place about one week after the hit-and-run
accident, on the same highway near the location of the acci-
dent, and at about the same time of night. And police used
the stops to obtain information from drivers, some of whom
might well have been in the vicinity of the crime at the time
it occurred. See App. 28–29 (describing police belief that
motorists routinely leaving work after night shifts at nearby
industrial complexes might have seen something relevant).
Most importantly, the stops interfered only minimally with
liberty of the sort the Fourth Amendment seeks to protect.
Viewed objectively, each stop required only a brief wait in
line—a very few minutes at most. Contact with the police
lasted only a few seconds. Cf. Martinez-Fuerte, supra, at
547 (upholding stops of three-to-five minutes); Sitz, supra,

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Opinion of Stevens, J.
at 448 (upholding delays of 25 seconds). Police contact con-
sisted simply of a request for information and the distribu-
tion of a flyer. Cf. Martinez-Fuerte, supra, at 546 (uphold-
ing inquiry as to motorists’ citizenship and immigration
status); Sitz, supra, at 447 (upholding examination of all driv-
ers for signs of intoxication). Viewed subjectively, the con-
tact provided little reason for anxiety or alarm. The police
stopped all vehicles systematically. Cf. Martinez-Fuerte,
supra, at 558; Sitz, supra, at 452–453. And there is no alle-
gation here that the police acted in a discriminatory or other-
wise unlawful manner while questioning motorists during
stops.
For these reasons we conclude that the checkpoint stop
was constitutional.
The judgment of the Illinois Supreme Court is
Reversed.
Justice Stevens, with whom Justice Souter and Jus-
tice Ginsburg join, concurring in part and dissenting in
part.
There is a valid and important distinction between seizing
a person to determine whether she has committed a crime
and seizing a person to ask whether she has any information
about an unknown person who committed a crime a week
earlier. I therefore join Parts I and II of the Court’s opinion
explaining why our decision in Indianapolis v. Edmond, 531
U. S. 32 (2000), is not controlling in this case. However,
I find the issue discussed in Part III of the opinion closer
than the Court does and believe it would be wise to remand
the case to the Illinois state courts to address that issue in
the first instance.
In contrast to pedestrians, who are free to keep walking
when they encounter police officers handing out flyers or
seeking information, motorists who confront a roadblock are
required to stop, and to remain stopped for as long as the
officers choose to detain them. Such a seizure may seem

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Opinion of Stevens, J.
relatively innocuous to some, but annoying to others who are
forced to wait for several minutes when the line of cars is
lengthened—for example, by a surge of vehicles leaving a
factory at the end of a shift. Still other drivers may find an
unpublicized roadblock at midnight on a Saturday some-
what alarming.
On the other side of the equation, the likelihood that ques-
tioning a random sample of drivers will yield useful infor-
mation about a hit-and-run accident that occurred a week
earlier is speculative at best. To be sure, the sample in this
case was not entirely random: The record reveals that the
police knew that the victim had finished work at the Post
Office shortly before the fatal accident, and hoped that other
employees of the Post Office or the nearby industrial park
might work on similar schedules and, thus, have been driving
the same route at the same time the previous week. That
is a plausible theory, but there is no evidence in the record
that the police did anything to confirm that the nearby busi-
nesses in fact had shift changes at or near midnight on Satur-
days, or that they had reason to believe that a roadblock
would be more effective than, say, placing flyers on the em-
ployees’ cars.
In short, the outcome of the multifactor test prescribed in
Brown v. Texas, 443 U. S. 47 (1979), is by no means clear on
the facts of this case. Because the Illinois Appellate Court
and the State Supreme Court held that the Lombard road-
block was per se unconstitutional under Indianapolis v.
Edmond, neither court attempted to apply the Brown test.
“We ordinarily do not decide in the first instance issues
not resolved below.” Pierce County v. Guillen, 537 U. S.
129, 148, n. 10 (2003). We should be especially reluctant
to abandon our role as a court of review in a case in which
the constitutional inquiry requires analysis of local condi-
tions and practices more familiar to judges closer to the
scene. I would therefore remand the case to the Illinois

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Opinion of Stevens, J.
courts to undertake the initial analysis of the issue that the
Court resolves in Part III of its opinion. To that extent,
I respectfully dissent.