It's tempting, sometimes ...
Posted on 12/30/2014 3:52:48 PM PST by lbryce
Methinks there is much more to this story than the clearly biased report presented here....
But bread and circuses
Ah, so the truth comes to light.... As I suspected, the court ruled properly... the owners gave consent, in doing so no 4th amendment protection was violated.....Sotomayor showed just how much of a complete idiot, and completely unqualified jurist she is once again, she did not protect anything, but was the voice of uneducated blather.
“However if there is a successful challenge to the law they presumed to enforce, then it should clear the pipeline of consequences.”
Why? Suppose a cop stops a car for driving in the high use lane with only one occupant, but discovers after stopping it that there was a second occupant asleep in the back. However, having made the stop, he smells alcohol on the breath of the driver and the driver tests at 0.18 BAC. Should the drunk driving go unpunished because the cop did not know about the second person in the car at the time of the stop?
The police do not violate your rights when they stop you. They are tasked with stopping crimes. If they have a reasonable belief you are committing a crime, then stopping you is the only way to discover if you have done anything to merit arrest.
If they arrest you, they have not violated any of your rights. There is no punishment. You don’t leave with a criminal record. Cops cannot do their job if they need incontrovertible proof of illegality. Proof is dealt with in court. Cops only need a reasonable suspicion to stop and investigate, and a reasonable belief of guilt to arrest. Courts deal with proof.
It does not violate your rights if a cop stops you, having a reasonable suspicion, and it turns out there was no plausible violation. Cops cannot investigate possible crimes if they cannot make some stops that turn out to be invalid. However, it has ALWAYS been the case that a cop who notices something wrong while investigating for A can end up arresting someone for B.
I think you need to read up on criminal law. You don’t seem to understand the subject.
“...Accepting the unconstitutionality of the ordinance as a given, we nonetheless reversed. At the time the officers arrested DeFillippo, we explained, “there was no controlling precedent that this ordinance was or was not constitutional, and hence the conduct observed violated a presumptively valid ordinance.” Id.,at 37. Acknowledging that the outcome might have been different had the ordinance been “grossly and flagrantly unconstitutional,” we concluded that under the circumstances “there was abundant probable cause to satisfy the constitutional prerequisite for an arrest.” Id.,at 37–38.
The officers were wrong in concluding that DeFillippo was guilty of a criminal offense when he declined to identify himself. That a court only later declared the ordinance unconstitutional does not change the fact that DeFillippo’s conduct was lawful when the officers observed it. See Danforthv. Minnesota, 552 U. S. 264, 271 (2008). But the officers’ assumption that the law was valid was reasonable, and their observations gave them “abundant probable cause” to arrest DeFillippo. 443 U. S., at 37. Although DeFillippo could not be prosecuted under the identification ordinance, the search that turned up the drugs was constitutional...
...Here, by contrast, the mistake of law relates to the antecedent question of whether it was reasonable for an officer to suspect that the defendant’s conduct was illegal. If so, there was no violation of the Fourth Amendment in the first place...
...Finally, Heien and amicipoint to the well-known maxim, “Ignorance of the law is no excuse,” and contend that it is fundamentally unfair to let police officers get away with mistakes of law when the citizenry is accorded no such leeway. Though this argument has a certain rhetorical appeal, it misconceives the implication of the maxim. The true symmetry is this: Just as an individual generally cannot escape criminal liability based on a mistaken understanding of the law, so too the government cannot impose criminal liability based on a mistaken understanding of the law.
If the law required two working brake lights, Heien could not escape a ticket by claiming he reasonably thought he needed only one; if the law required only one, Sergeant Darisse could not issue a valid ticket by claiming he reasonably thought drivers needed two. But just because mistakes of law cannot justify either the imposition or the avoidance of criminal liability, it does not follow that they cannot justify an investigatory stop.
And Heien is not appealing a brake-light ticket; he is appealing a cocaine-trafficking conviction as to which there is no asserted mistake of fact or law.
The North Carolina Court of Appeals concluded that the “rear lamps” discussed in subsection (d) do not include brake lights, but, given the “other,” it would at least have been reasonable to think they did. Both the majority and the dissent in the North Carolina Supreme Court so concluded, and we agree. See 366 N. C., at 282–283, 737 S. E. 2d, at 358–359; id.,at 283, 737 S. E. 2d, at 359 (Hudson, J., dissenting) (calling the Court of Appeals’ decision “surprising”).
This “stop lamp” provision, moreover, had never been previously construed by North Carolina’s appellate courts. See id.,at 283, 737 S. E. 2d, at 359 (majority opinion). It was thus objectively reasonable for an officer in Sergeant Darisse’s position to think that Heien’s faulty right brake light was a violation of North Carolina law. And because the mistake of law was reasonable, there was reasonable suspicion justifying the stop.”
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/13-604_ec8f.pdf
“The bible is clear that sin is not imputed “where there is no law.” That is the authoritative heavenly pattern.”
No one imputed “sin” to the defendant’s broken tail light. The lower court ruled it acceptable, and the defendant did no jail time and suffered no fine for a broken tail light.
God knows what is in our hearts. Cops do not. Cops do not impute sin to us. They merely try to enforce laws. Those laws are not written by God, and can be interpreted in many ways. The cop can not be held responsible for complying with every possible interpretation, or we would have no law enforcement at all.
Ahem, the maxim would also apply to civil responsibility, which is closer to the heart of the matter here.
At the heart of debates like this is a court policy which is called the exclusionary rule, by which indeed the “drunk driver” could get a free pass in the sense of not incurring a criminal penalty (though that person would still be publicly shamed by the nature of the events). If we don’t want an exclusionary rule then we should outlaw it. But do not miss the fact that it attempts to rein in government. If mere honor does not support the 4th Amendment (the ethical behavior of the barristers in Mutiny on the Bounty comes nostalgically to mind), other measures become attractive.
You almost begin to look reasonable and then you dish out this sockdollager of a strawman. Sorry, no sale.
“At the heart of debates like this is a court policy which is called the exclusionary rule”
You might want to read up on the exclusionary rule. It was a court opinion, not found in the US Constitution, and it does not work the way you want it to work.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/exclusionary_rule
And if cops could only stop someone when they had total certainty of guilt, and applying the law in such a way that no future court would interpret it differently, then yes - we would have effectively ceased having any law enforcement. I’ve read more than enough court cases to realize courts often interpret plainly written laws in ways no reasonable person would. Here in Arizona, it has been common for the legislature to re-write laws after the state supreme court found a way to mangle the plain meaning of a law and toss it out.
If you want to see courts mangle plainly written laws, read some tort law cases.
And yet would the consequences be anywhere close to as dire as you say?
The consequence is to clear the pipeline. Not to hang the police And it can only happen if a law was misconstrued so as to “call black white.”
How often does that happen? Truly?
It sounds like you are the one being unreasonable here, in any sense of the word.
As always, the headline writers do not care one whit about the story that follows. “reasonable mistake about the law” and “ignorance of the law” are two very different things.
And this is not about some arbitrary “future court” as if we could go to 3000 AD or something and wreak damage on what happened a thousand years back. One more strawman enters your implications. It’s about courts that govern the situation at hand. The fact that you even imply the state court would re-reverse the ruling means that you DO know it applies.
Strip your view of strawmen and it might be worthy of consideration. Otherwise please don’t bother.
It's tempting, sometimes ...
So we are governed by two echelons of law? The “reasonable” one (whatever that might be) and the one refined by court challenge?
That is a government of men. There is no conceivable way that a contrary opinion would have been abused. If the law fails in court, the progression of adverse consequences of believing it is stopped as far as humanly possible. This doesn’t equate to vendettas on the police — how can it? What is so hard about that.
No, police have one standard (reasonable suspicion to stop, probable cause to arrest), and the courts have another (beyond reasonable doubt to convict). Is that so difficult to follow?
“And it can only happen if a law was misconstrued so as to “call black white.”
Ummm...that was the point. The law was NOT so misconstrued here. In fact, the NC Supreme Court has indicated it agreed with the cop’s reading, not the lower court’s.
The cop stopped the car based on a reasonable and possibly correct interpretation of the law. The US Supreme Court made that clear - it was a reasonable stop, not one that called black white.
Who adjudicates the extent of the first echelon in this courtless police system?
The very plethora of existing law should alarm you if this means the police have no criteria to be expected to know a law is a certain way. Having two clauses contradict each other in the very same page should be a red flag, and the proper thing to do is to hold off on doing anything with the law until the legislature has clarified.
Are you claiming the state supreme court actually put the claimed reading of the law back into force? That could indeed change the specific picture, but I fear your claim goes beyond the fact.
Earlier you were saying they suggested they would. But in the absence of an actual appeal on the prosecution of that law, they can not.
“And this is not about some arbitrary “future court” as if we could go to 3000 AD or something and wreak damage on what happened a thousand years back.”
Cops cannot make stops if the standard is, “Is it impossible for a court to rule the cop made an error in the law?”
Read some court cases, particularly in tort law. Courts misconstrue the law ALL THE TIME. Heck, that is why we have appeals courts and higher.
“Strip your view of strawmen and it might be worthy of consideration. Otherwise please don’t bother.”
Unless you are a moderator on FreeRepublic, you do not decide what I can or should post.
You are wrong on the law. When Thomas, Scalia & Alito all disagree with you, and only the Wise Latina agrees, you are on very shaky legal ground.
Frankly, you do not know what you are writing about. You are using terms that do not mean what you think they mean and ignoring how the criminal justice system works. You need to go do some self-study or take some classes in criminal law before posting your ignorant musings.
What I am saying is the NC Supreme Court made it clear they might well agree with the cop’s interpretation. Since that bears on the question, “Did the cop make a reasonable stop?”, it is worth mentioning.
Please either read the case or stop blathering.
Nobody is asking that. It is only being asked that if a governing court finds the law in question to be invalid, with all proper appeals exercised, THEN and ONLY THEN is the pipeline of consequences cleared. What are you envisioning, police getting hanged? And at any rate we had a pretty glaring situation here on its face: two contrary clauses on the same page. That should equate to a "do nothing about it until legislatively clarified" situation.
You must have a whole barn full of strawmen there, pardner.
It doesn’t bear on it if by your own observation the police aren’t expected to be clairvoyant?
Thou shalt not suck and blow in the same breath — dictum of British law.
And your loaded term “blather” should be applied to you.
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