Supreme Court Rules Police Can Violate The 4th Amendment

Zero Hedge ^ | 1/27/14 | Tyler Durden

[Yellowstone Joe]

WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a blow to the constitutional rights of citizens, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8-1 in Heien v. State of North Carolina that police officers are permitted to violate American citizens’ Fourth Amendment rights if the violation results from a “reasonable” mistake about the law on the part of police. Acting contrary to the venerable principle that “ignorance of the law is no excuse,” the Court ruled that evidence obtained by police during a traffic stop that was not legally justified can be used to prosecute the person if police were reasonably mistaken that the person had violated the law. The Rutherford Institute had asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hold law enforcement officials accountable to knowing and abiding by the rule of law. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the Court’s lone dissenter, warned that the court’s ruling “means further eroding the Fourth Amendment’s protection of civil liberties in a context where that protection has already been worn down.”

The Rutherford Institute’s amicus brief in Heien v. North Carolina is available at www.rutherford.org.

“By refusing to hold police accountable to knowing and abiding by the rule of law, the Supreme Court has given government officials a green light to routinely violate the law,” said John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of the award-winning book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State. “This case may have started out with an improper traffic stop, but where it will end—given the turbulence of our age, with its police overreach, military training drills on American soil, domestic surveillance, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture, wrongful convictions, and corporate corruption—is not hard to predict. This ruling is what I would call a one-way, nonrefundable ticket to the police state.”

[ctdonath2]

“So it’s okay if the cop is ignorant but not the suspect?”

Well, actually in this case the suspect was NOT ignorant. He KNEW there was contraband in the vehicle, KNEW it was illegal, and KNEW what would happen if a cop searched the vehicle - and he CONSENTED to search of the vehicle.

If the cop were expected to have perfect understanding of the law, we wouldn’t need courts. We could just move on to the Judge Dredd system.

The suspect should at least know enough about the law to not get close to the edge of it without further taking opportunity to clarify legality.

In this case, the cop’s confusion was over how many & what combination of rear-of-vehicle signal lights had to be dysfunctional to warrant citation, an understandable confusion in the wording of a law for which he did not have the authority to make final judgement on - that’s why it went to a judge (actually a series of them). The suspect may or may not have known about the light, but if he did it’s his problem for not having fixed it - I’m sure he was no more clear about it than the cop, and the simplest solution would be just fix the light rather than hire lawyers to research the legality of a busted light.

This isn’t a true “ignorance of the law is no excuse” case. The drive knew. There was no ignorance save for multiple fair interpretations of the law requiring judicial review.