In the 1996 case Jon E. Edmond v. United States, the U.S Supreme Court ruled on whether police checkpoints aimed at uncovering illegal drugs were constitutional under the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures. The court held that these checkpoints violated citizens' rights as they constituted an unreasonable intrusion into privacy without a specific suspicion of criminal activity. The decision was based on two primary factors: first, that law enforcement's primary purpose for conducting such stops was general crime control rather than addressing immediate public safety concerns; secondly, there wasn't enough balance between this invasion of privacy and government interest in preventing crime to justify it constitutionally.

In the dissenting opinion for Jon E. Edmond v. United States, Justice Scalia argued that the majority's decision to uphold a mandatory life sentence without parole was inconsistent with previous rulings on sentencing guidelines and violated constitutional principles of due process. He contended that the federal statute under which Edmond was sentenced did not clearly specify whether conspiracy to distribute drugs constituted a "continuing criminal enterprise," thus warranting such severe punishment. Furthermore, he criticized the majority's interpretation of this ambiguity as giving too much discretion to judges rather than juries in determining key facts related to sentencing decisions, thereby undermining defendants' Sixth Amendment rights. Finally, he expressed concern about potential abuses of power by prosecutors who could use threats of harsh sentences like those imposed on Edmond as leverage in plea negotiations.