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.
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?
“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?
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.
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.