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“Some of us have been consistent in maintaining that such rules are not mere ‘technicalities’, but are fundamental to the maintennence of our freedom.”

The tainted fruit theory requires us to let obviously guilty people go free because a cop made a mistake. We might want to fine police departments, but I remember one example where a guy who smashed a woman’s head in with a cinder block went free.

What about the dead woman’s rights? What about my right to walk down the street in freedom, not assaulted by thugs or gunned down with stolen fully automatic weapons?

We have ample protection built in already.

“More than two centuries ago, this Court held that reasonable mistakes of law, like those of fact, could justify a certificate of probable cause. United States v. Riddle, 5 Cranch 311, 313. That holding was reiterated in numerous 19th-century decisions.”

That was an 1809 decision: “But as the construction of the law was liable to some question, the court will suffer the certificate of probable cause to remain as it is. A doubt as to the true construction of the law is as reasonable a cause for seizure as a doubt respecting the fact.”

Cops are not experts in the exact wording of every law. No one is. They cannot be required to distinguish “relevant code provision, which requires that a car be “equipped with a stop lamp” vs “stop lamps”. No one alive knows all the traffic codes and public laws to that level of detail.

Suppose the same cop stopped me. When I acted like a normal person, he would have waived me on, or issued a citation for having one inop brake light which I could have fought (and won) in court.

As the conservatives on the Court wrote:

“Because the Fourth Amendment tolerates only objectively reasonable mistakes, cf. Whrenv. United States, 517 U. S. 806, 813, an officer can gain no advantage through poor study. Finally, while the maxim “Ignorance of the law is no excuse” correctly implies that the State cannot impose punishment based on a mistake of law, it does not mean a reasonable mistake of law cannot justify an investigatory stop...

...The Fourth Amendment prohibits “unreasonable searches and seizures.” Under this standard, a search or seizure may be permissible even though the justification for the action includes a reasonable factual mistake. An officer might, for example, stop a motorist for traveling alone in a high-occupancy vehicle lane, only to discover upon approaching the car that two children are slumped over asleep in the back seat. The driver has not violated the law, but neither has the officer violated the Fourth Amendment.

But what if the police officer’s reasonable mistake is not one of fact but of law? In this case, an officer stopped a vehicle because one of its two brake lights was out, but a court later determined that a single working brake light was all the law required. The question presented is whether such a mistake of law can nonetheless give rise to the reasonable suspicion necessary to uphold the seizure under the Fourth Amendment. We hold that it can...

...Noting that the State had chosen not to seek review of the Court of Appeals’ interpretation of the vehicle code, the North Carolina Supreme Court assumed for purposes of its decision that the faulty brake light was not a violation. Id.,at 275, 737 S. E. 2d, at 354. But the court concluded that, for several reasons, Sergeant Darisse could have reasonably, even if mistakenly, read the vehicle code to require that both brake lights be in good working order.

Most notably, a nearby code provision requires that “all originally equipped rear lamps” be functional. Id.,at 282–283, 737 S. E. 2d, at 358–359 (quoting N. C. Gen. Stat. Ann. §20–129(d)). Because Sergeant Darisse’s mistaken understanding of the vehicle code was reasonable, the stop was valid. “An officer may make a mistake, including a mistake of law, yet still act reasonably under the circumstances. . . . [W]hen an officer acts reasonably under the circumstances, he is not violating the Fourth Amendment.” Id.,at 279, 737 S. E. 2d, at 356. “

Here is an important point:

At the time of the stop, no court anywhere had ruled the traffic code required only one working light. The NC Supreme Court did not review it because they were not asked to, but the cop COULD NOT HAVE KNOWN HOW THE COURT WOULD APPLY THE LAW IN THE FUTURE. The wording is conflicting, and the court did not decide until later that only one light was required - and based on the wording, I think the only error was when the court decided only one light was needed.

But the cop had no way of knowing, at the time of the stop, that both lights needed to be out for a violation. Thus you are holding the cops to an impossible standard - how will a court interpret the law on some future date.