Posted on 12/20/2014 11:11:53 PM PST by Altariel
In a decision issued this morning, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the police in a case arising from an officer’s “mistake of law.” At issue in Heien v. North Carolina was a 2009 traffic stop for a single busted brake light that led to the discovery of illegal drugs inside the vehicle. According to state law at the time, however, motor vehicles were required only to have “a stop lamp,” meaning that the officer did not have a lawful reason for the initial traffic stop because it was not a crime to drive around with a single busted brake light. Did that stop therefore violate the 4th Amendment’s guarantee against unreasonable search and seizure? Writing today for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts held that it did not. “Because the officer’s mistake about the brake-light law was reasonable,” Roberts declared, “the stop in this case was lawful under the Fourth Amendment.”
Roberts’ opinion was joined by Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Samuel Alito, and Elena Kagan. Writing alone in dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor criticized her colleagues for giving the police far too much leeway. “One is left to wonder,” she wrote, “why an innocent citizen should be made to shoulder the burden of being seized whenever the law may be susceptible to an interpretative question.” In Sotomayor's view, “an officer’s mistake of law, no matter how reasonable, cannot support the individualized suspicion necessary to justify a seizure under the Fourth Amendment.”
The Supreme Court's opinion in Heien v. North Carolina is available here.
Bizarro world. I agree with the wise Latina. The cops, of all people, should know the law. If they don’t, they shouldn’t be cops. Plus, way too many, and maybe a huge majority, know very little about the constitution. And that’s the one thing should be required to know more than anything.
Well there’s the stop, and then there’s the prosecution afterwards. The stop may have been reasonable, but since the drug prosecution was based on a reasonable stop that was actually unsupported by law, it should have been thrown out on those grounds. Two different things. In other words, it should have been an empty stop - allowed based on reasonableness (and thus protected from suit), but void for any empowerment of prosecution. Otherwise cops can just openly make up claims of laws that literally don’t exist and then use them to look for whatever else they can find - just like they did here. And in that case, the 4th Amendment is gone.
cops should not be able to enforce non-law
I'd like to know how the law is generally understood and generally enforced in North Carolina.
If the term “a stop lamp” is customarily understood to mean “both tail lights,” then many decades of NC case law would be solidly on the side of the cops.
The term “a stop lamp” is clearly archaic and was probably written in the 1920’s or even earlier.
But, if the law actually means "one tail light" and is regularly enforced that way, then I don't see how the Court can ignore that.
I'm a strict Constitutionalist.
If the laws are not enforced exactly as written, then why bother to have a Constitution or Judges?
This should be the biggest story of the week. The month. Maybe years?
But, nobody cares.
“The cops, of all people, should know the law.”
In a perfect world yes, just as an IRS agent should know every tax regulation. Unfortunately there are now so many laws, regulations, and interpretations of laws by the courts, it is impossible for any one person to know the law.
Even the members of the Supreme Court rely on staff to research the law prior to issuing a ruling. With years of legal experience and the the help of clerks and researchers the SC can’t agree on the meaning of the law. If the 9 justices don’t know the law, how is the average policeman going to know more than a fraction of the laws he or she is expected to enforce?
If the motorist had been known the relevant law, he would never have consented to the search.
I remember this real well, now that you posted it. I’m glad it turned out this way. It isn’t as if the cop blatantly ignored something he was quite familiar with. If the guy hadn’t practically thrown the contraband in the officer’s face, he would’ve been OK, IIRC.
I’m not. Had the Supreme Court not been privy to the actual drugs, etc. in this case, but rather something innocuous, they’d have likely ruled differently.
They stretched their conclusion based on the ensuing crime rather than the one (misinterpreted infraction) which begat the finding.
The majority of the Supreme Court justices have, over the years, amply demonstrated that, generally, they are traitors to the United States of America.
Years ago, while driving to Atlanta, I saw what appeared to be a traffic stop. Two frail old ladies were standing beside their car while two police officers were emptying the contents of their luggage on to the ground.
As traffic was slow, we also saw the police end their search, get in their cars, & leave the two women on the side of the road to try to recover their belongings from the DIRT.
Disgusting.
It was impossible for the cop to “know the law”. After this arrest, the defendant argued the wording of the law only required one light to work. In spite of another sentence indicating both needed to work, the court ruled - AFTER the arrest and for the first time - that the wording only required one working light.
Since this ruling changed the accepted meaning, and came about only after the stop went to trial, there was no way any cop or any lawyer could have known.
The state supreme court was not asked the question, so it remains a lower court ruling that only one light is needed. The state supreme court pointed out the other sentence indicating two were needed, but since they were not specifically asked they made no ruling. However, in reading the state supreme court’s decision, it seems likely that if it DOES go to them, they will overturn the lower court and rule both lights need to work.
Since there was no way a cop could have known, in advance, that a lower court would rule only one light was needed, and since the state supreme court seems to doubt the lower court was right, it is ridiculous to expect a cop to predict in advance how a court will interpret the law.
That is why the US Supreme Court ruled as it did. If cops could only stop people based on the outcome of FUTURE CASES, no one would ever be stopped. The legal principle is that the cop can be mistaken about the law and still arrest you. That doesn’t violate your rights, because the COURTS will determine guilt or innocence. All the cop needs to make the arrest is a reasonable suspicion that the law has been broken.
For an arrest, a cop merely needs to have a reasonable belief a law was broken. The courts will decide if you did or did not break it. And no cop can be required to know how a future court will interpret the law.
This is trivial. See post #15. It helps to read the court cases instead of relying on the news.
Ah, but with the overwhelming number of complex laws on the books, not even the Lawyers & judges know all the laws.
That is why is is just easier to make up law as you go along as Obama does.
Why do we have to have 51 legislatures in the USA continually passing new criminal law every year? Why does a murder statute have to be 20,000+ words long? How is a citizen to obey thousands of complex laws, many of which they do not know exists?
This is the criminalization of moral people for the purposes of enslavement.
Did the driver submit to being searched?
A very good question — though some would argue that the law is what the courts decree it is.
Carl Vehse:
The majority of the Supreme Court justices have, over the years, amply demonstrated that, generally, they are traitors to the United States of America.
You, sir, are quite correct.
VerySadAmerican:
Bizarro world. I agree with the wise Latina. The cops, of all people, should know the law.
Agreed; but then the Law Enforcement / Prison / Legal Services industry-complex gets a lot out of Constitutions being ignored and the complicated body of works [often contradictory to the relevant Constitution] called statutes.
I don't think it'll be addressed without somehow breaking the power/influence of the aforementioned complex.
I think, on a federal level, some of the following Proposals for Amendments would help.
[FR Comment Thread]
It’s inexcusable for a cop that patrols the North Carolina highways not know that only one red light is required on the back of the vehicle. (It’s been changed.)
Antique cars are still only required to have one tail light. I wonder if this dumb cop would have stopped a Model A then searched the trunk.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.