Posted on 08/04/2014 11:32:56 AM PDT by Ken H
Oral arguments set for US Supreme Court to decide whether a traffic stop is invalid when the police officer is wrong about the law.
Is a police officer's traffic stop valid if he is wrong about the law? The US Supreme Court announced it would take up that question when it returns in October to hear the case of Nicholas Brady Heien.
On April 29, 2009, Surry County Sheriff's Sergeant Matt Darisse was on Interstate 77 when he saw a Ford Escort hit the brakes, and the right-side light did not illuminate. Sergeant Darisse decided to pull over the Ford, which was driven by Maynor Javier Vasquez with Heien asleep in the back seat. After the driver's license came back clean, Sergeant Darisse handed him a warning.
While questioning Vasquez, however, the sergeant became suspicious. Vasquez said he was on his way to West Virginia, but Heien said they were headed to Kentucky. Both Vasquez and Heien consented to a search of the vehicle which turned up cocaine.
The sergeant was wrong to pull over the Ford, as it is legal to drive in North Carolina as long as one brake light is functional. Liberal and conservative groups have joined to urge the US Supreme Court to reject the December 2012 decision of North Carolina's high court, which held that since it had never ruled on the stop light issue and the officer's interpretation was "reasonable," the stop should be considered valid.
The Cato Institute, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and American Civil Liberties Union teamed up to file a friend of the court brief arguing police ought to have the same duty as citizens to know and obey the law. The groups urged the US Supreme Court to uphold the principle that a traffic stop is always invalid when the cop is wrong about the law.
"The North Carolina Supreme Court's rule threatens to undermine law enforcement," the groups wrote. "It understates the importance of legal training for law enforcement officials, as well as diminishing the public perception of law enforcement officials' knowledge and authority."
North Carolina prosecutors argued the single stop light law was "antiquated" and that the Fourth Amendment does not require police officers to be perfect. As long as the suspicion is reasonable, they argued, that was good enough.
"No one disagrees that the officer stopped petitioner's vehicle based upon a reasonable belief of a violation," North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper argued last month. "That reasonable belief was dispelled only by a 'surprising' appellate court ruling that for the first time construed a traffic law on the books for more than fifty years to require only one functioning brake light. The Supreme Court of North Carolina correctly ruled that reasonable mistakes of law, like this one, can support reasonable suspicion."
Oral arguments before the US Supreme Court have been set for October 6.
road stops bother me....unless they’re looking for a criminal
So on other words, cops can simply make up laws.
Sounds great.
APf
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A major principal of our Common Law based legal system is, that if something is not expressly illegal, it is by default legal.
This being said, in this case there was no justified reasonable suspicion to permit the stop, determined after the fact, so without that, there could be no determination of probable cause, and no arrest. Thus anything found after the initial error should be inadmissible.
Ping
Look at that! Peace officers wrapped up like muzzies, on their way to shoot a Irish Setter?
The fact that they took on this case is a strong indication thay will reverse the lower court.
That reasonable belief was dispelled only by a ‘surprising’ appellate court ruling that for the first time construed a traffic law on the books for more than fifty years to require only one functioning brake light.
Apparently, there was a new interpretation of the law based on this case. There’s no way the officer could have known.
Yep, they will follow a person for miles sometimes just looking for an excuse to pull someone over. Before the advent of dashcams, the officer would often just lie about the reason for the stop such as, “You crossed the yellow line” or “You didn’t use your blinker to change lanes” or some such crap. And of course, they do this because they can justify seizing the driver’s car and any money they find if they even SUSPECT the property was obtained with the sale of drugs.
Many posters on this thread believe that the guilty people should be acquitted because "police ought to have the same duty as citizens to know and obey the law." A better argument, offered by Blood of Tyrants follows immediately:
Otherwise the cop could make up an imaginary law to justify the stop as an excuse to search a vehicle.
In other words there is a higher value at stake here than merely punishing the guilty, assuring that our rights of privacy are protected against overreaching police. That means that the right of privacy is so important that we are willing to have guilty people go free to prevent its abuse.
Note, that in turn assumes that there is a relationship between denying police the right to use the fruits of an improper search and maintaining our constitutional right of privacy. Is there no other way to protect our privacy and still convict the guilty? Is this a good case in which to quash the evidence and acquit guilty people? Is this a case of overzealous police? Hardly.
Our general rights of privacy are not at stake from cops making an honest mistake in conducting a search based on an honest misconception of the law. Therefore, unless an argument can be made that to permit such searches under honest mistake of law circumstances is to open the floodgates to improper searches, the evidence should be admitted.
So these facts we have two hurdles to overcome if we want to exclude the evidence: First, we must agree that withholding the evidence discourages police from making improper searches. The Supreme Court has already made this decision in the affirmative. Second, cops will likely make up laws in order to justify improper searches.
Merely to argue that the police should be held to the standard of knowing the law because the public is held to that standard is not persuasive. A practical level, police have to act under extreme pressure in a moments notice without the ability to go to law library and research difficult search and seizure questions or questions of law in general. The test should be whether the policeman makes the judgment of breaking of the law in good faith. This is a factual question which could be handled either by a jury or by a judge in a search and seizure hearing. The law makes those judgments all the time. It asks was this reasonable under the circumstances? There is no rational relationship between protecting privacy and the idea that cops should be held to the same standard as citizens. That might be a satisfying emotional argument but it does not on its face relate to our constitutional right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures.
To rule that under all circumstances and in all cases in which a policeman misconceived the law renders evidence inadmissible against an admittedly guilty party is a remedy that is unnecessarily broad to achieve its proper constitutional purpose of protecting the public from invasive and unreasonable searches and seizures. It is unnecessary because the courts have proven ability to litigate these issues and determine reasonableness. To propound an arbitrary rule is likely to cause more societal harm as guilty people are released back into society to commit more crime.
This is not the case of SWAT teams gone wild or of rogue policeman extorting innocent civilians, this is a run-of-the-mill case which can be easily handled on its own merits by the court system.
AHad a cop follow me off of an interstate and onto the off-ramp. The off-ramp was uphill, and there was a stop sign at the top. I was driving a standard shift vehiucle, so I rolled up to the stop sign, and began to roll backward almost immediately. I pulled out and the cop stopped me for a stop sign violation, even though I tried to explain to him that for me to roll backwards at some point I had to be going exactly zero miles per hour. He didn’t get it, and wrote the ticket. I went to court and the judge actually admonished the prosecution for not throwing the ticket out. He wondered, aloud, what kind of education the police and prosecution had received to not understand a basic law of physics.
You assume the cop didn’t know the law. Surely this isn’t the first time that the cop had ever ticketed someone for a broken taillight.
I submit that the cop had an ulterior motive for stopping the vehicle: because he knew that if he found drugs or SUSPECTED that drugs were involved, he could seize the car and any cash he found and keep them to fund the department’s JBT/SWAT squads.
If the finders of fact conclude that the mistake was honest, the evidence should be admitted.
If the finder of fact concludes that the mistake was contrived and dishonest, the evidence should be excluded. It should be determined on a case-by-case basis. If we make an arbitrary law we are fashioning yet one more remedy for all cases that lets a guilty party go in every case. That remedy is not necessary.
I must disagree. "Reasonable suspicion" comes into play when there is some uncertainty. All of the facts are not in.
But there is no uncertainty here. The facts are all in. A single broken tail light is not an infraction. It is up to the cop - and the driver as well - to know the facts.
What was the support for the cop’s presumption that the vehicle code applied to that car, or the driver of that car, at the time of the stop?
checkpoints and traffic stop are two different critters. You might want to bone up on that.
Remember the Border Patrolman who said the Boy Scout couldn't take a picture of him, put a gun on him, and searched the Boy Scouts' van for four hours? If he gets to interpret the law, he's off scot free... whether he finds anything or not.
Cops do not get to interpret the law, cases have been thrown out many times because cops acted stupidly. The law doesn’t change depending on the mind of a cop.
I couldn't agree more that it's the way it should be. However, without the help of a good lawyer, the cops can cause problems by overstepping their bounds. Decisions like this hopefully knock that back a bit.
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