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