Posted on 12/30/2014 3:52:48 PM PST by lbryce
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. The Rutherford Institute
4th amendment gone
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.”
(Excerpt) Read more at thefreethoughtproject.com ...
Sonia Sotomayor the only one that got it right?!?!?!?!
Better 1000 guilty men go free than one innocent person spend one day in jail.
So normal citizens can now plead ignorance of the law? No?
The Wise Latina is on your side.
All others, no.
Free Thought Project is a commie group aligned with the Ferguson protestors.
Why you post commie propaganda?
Just one more step toward police state.
“I do not consent to any search, officer.”
What’s to stop any other ‘reasonable’ violations of our rights?
And what the hell use is having a right if it can be so ‘reasonably’ violated?
“Sonia Sotomayor the only one that got it right?!?!?!?!”
That tells us a lot.
First and foremost that this Free Thought Project does not truthfully report things.
Why you filth an agency which has routinely protected freedom of conservative religious causes?
Rutherford Institute is not a communist cause.
There really is a problem. The new meaning of reasonable has carried away the old one. There was no valid reason in the originalist sense. That Scalia bought this is scarier than that Sotomayer rejected it.
I’m pretty sure this was brought up a few days back on FR. There were some freepers that weighed in about it and dispelled the notion taken out of context. It wasn’t an overly popular thread but some good facts brought out. Maybe someone else recalls?
I never understood what that means. Let’s try to get every case right.
One could quibble and say it could have turned out different had the woman refused. That the court did not treat the matter.
But it sure reads like a red carpet to Obama thinking, where it’s what you FEEEEEL that makes something reasonable even if there is black letter law against it.
Why did the person consent to a vehicle search for a supposed minor safety violation? The simple fact that cocaine was in her vehicle should have had her refuse the search let alone that there was no probable cause unless she was wasted and showed signs of intoxication. The fact that this made it to the Supreme court is astonishing. The article is vague and there has to be a lot more than what was presented.
RT sure has a lot of Communist iconography up at their site.
This bogus info has been posted before:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3241173/posts
When the “Wise Latina” is the ONLY one who votes for X, it is a safe bet X is stupid/unconstitutional.
See this from one of the the previous threads:
“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...And no cop can be required to know how a future court will interpret the law.”
Whatever happened to, “Ignorance of the law is no defense”? I guess that only applies to civilians.
The old court position is that any invalid law is void from the word go. So this is a change.
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