Delaware v. Prouse - Impact

In rendering their decision, the Supreme Court reiterated previous decisions that defined what constituted appropriate measure and protocol for random vehicular stops. In so doing, they ruled that the state of Delaware's support of random spot checks--made without preestablished protocol and at an officer's individual discretion--constituted unreasonable seizure which violated the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. Unless there existed a reasonable cause or suspicion that a vehicle and its occupants should be stopped and detained such as might be justified by a driver's violation of traffic regulations or any other law, police officers could not randomly stop and detain a driver. However, the Court's decision did not preclude the state of Delaware, or any other state, from crafting measures that would promote traffic safety so long as such measures did not intrude on a driver's privacy. The discretionary spot check on a public highway represented a constitutional violation because such stops were undertaken without probable cause or reasonable suspicion. Moreover, in specifying that random stops were not an effective method of preventing traffic accidents but, rather, an invasion of privacy, the Supreme Court's ruling served to provide states with guidance which would discourage law enforcement from committing an intrusive and unreasonable assault on the individual rights of drivers.