Is a DUI checkpoint a violation of fourth amendment rights? Interpretations vary, but some claim it amounts to a warrantless search, and they feel their rights are being violated every time they submit to one.
YouTuber HONORYOUROATH says there’s an additional concern. He worries that, even if a driver isn’t impaired, an officer at a DUI checkpoint may claim to have smelled alcohol or drugs, or heard a slurred voice, in order to invent probable cause for further search — also unconstitutional, he says.
To that end, he created a paper flier to use at a DUI checkpoint. With it, he refuses a search, and asks for his lawyer, without ever opening his mouth or rolling down his window. Instead, he places the flier in a bag, and as he rolls up to the checkpoint, he hangs it out of his window. Does it work, though?
Check out the video below.
Sure enough, the officers, despite looking a bit confused at first, check out what Jeff Gray calls his “Fair DUI” flier, and wave him through the checkpoint.
On the Fair DUI website , the idea behind the flier is further explained. The Fair DUI fliers aren’t intended for drunks, the site explains, but for liberty activists and “sober people at risk.”
Can this help a drunk person escape a DUI arrest? The designers clearly think not.
“The flyer is NOT intended for drunks. Drunks don’t follow instructions and that makes things worse.”
Sober people at risk of a DUI arrest, the site explains , are those who have “had a small number of drinks within the past six hours or taken any kind of medicine or drug that may still be active in your system.”
Ever for believers in individual liberty, the Fair DUI site explains, feeling that a search is illegal doesn’t automatically convey the ability to articulate that clearly in the face of armed and uniformed authority figures.
They also cite one case of an individual charged and convicted of a DUI despite negative test results, and a National Academy of Science statement that these tests are unreliable and often corrupted. Furthermore, in a Facebook post , the creators of the flier (and a related book) claim that labs will fake the results when people are arrested for “a bogus DUI.”
Though the video has gone viral, and the trick got the filmers through a DUI checkpoint without hassle, even Fair DUI admits that it’s not a method for everyone to try, and that the legality is dubious.