Posted on 12/15/2014 10:08:20 AM PST by zeugma
Syllabus
HEIEN v. NORTH CAROLINA ( )
367 N. C. 163, 749 S. E. 2d 278, affirmed.
NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued.The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader.See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
Syllabus
heien v. north carolina
Following a suspicious vehicle, Sergeant Matt Darisse noticed that only one of the vehicle’s brake lights was working and pulled the driver over. While issuing a warning ticket for the broken brake light, Darisse became suspicious of the actions of the two occupants and their answers to his questions. Petitioner Nicholas Brady Heien, the car’s owner, gave Darisse consent to search the vehicle. Darisse found cocaine, and Heien was arrested and charged with attempted trafficking. The trial court denied Heien’s motion to suppress the seized evidence on Fourth Amendment grounds, concluding that the vehicle’s faulty brake light gave Darisse reasonable suspicion to initiate the stop. The North Carolina Court of Appeals reversed, holding that the relevant code provision, which requires that a car be “equipped with a stop lamp,” N. C. Gen. Stat. Ann. §20–129(g), requires only a single lamp—which Heien’s vehicle had—and therefore the justification for the stop was objectively unreasonable. Reversing in turn, the State Supreme Court held that, even assuming no violation of the state law had occurred, Darisse’s mistaken understanding of the law was reasonable, and thus the stop was valid.
Held: Because Darisse’s mistake of law was reasonable, there was reasonable suspicion justifying the stop under the Fourth Amendment. Pp. 4–13.
(a) The Fourth Amendment requires government officials to act reasonably, not perfectly, and gives those officials “fair leeway for enforcing the law,” Brinegar v. United States, 338 U. S. 160. Searches and seizures based on mistakes of fact may be reasonable. See, e.g., Illinois v. Rodriguez, 497 U. S. 177–186. The limiting factor is that “the mistakes must be those of reasonable men.” Brinegar, supra, at 176. Mistakes of law are no less compatible with the concept of reasonable suspicion, which arises from an understanding of both the facts and the relevant law. Whether an officer is reasonably mistaken about the one or the other, the result is the same: the facts are outside the scope of the law. And neither the Fourth Amendment’s text nor this Court’s precedents offer any reason why that result should not be acceptable when reached by a reasonable mistake of law.
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. Although Riddle was not a Fourth Amendment case, it explained the concept of probable cause, which this Court has said carried the same “fixed and well known meaning” in the Fourth Amendment, Brinegar, supra, at 175, and n. 14, and no subsequent decision of this Court has undermined that understanding. The contrary conclusion would be hard to reconcile with the more recent precedent of Michigan v. DeFillippo, 443 U. S. 31, where the Court, addressing the validity of an arrest made under a criminal law later declared unconstitutional, held that the officers’ reasonable assumption that the law was valid gave them “abundant probable cause” to make the arrest, id., at 37. Heien attempts to recast DeFillippo as a case solely about the exclusionary rule, not the Fourth Amendment itself, but DeFillippo’s express holding is that the arrest was constitutionally valid because the officers had probable cause. See id., at 40. Heien misplaces his reliance on cases such as Davis v. United States, 564 U. S. ___, where any consideration of reasonableness was limited to the separate matter of remedy, not whether there was a Fourth Amendment violation in the first place.
Heien contends that the rationale that permits reasonable errors of fact does not extend to reasonable errors of law, arguing that officers in the field deserve a margin of error when making factual assessments on the fly. An officer may, however, also be suddenly confronted with a situation requiring application of an unclear statute. This Court’s holding does not discourage officers from learning the law. Because the Fourth Amendment tolerates only objectively reasonable mistakes, cf. Whren v. United States, 517 U. S. 806, 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. Pp. 4–12.
(b) There is little difficulty in concluding that Officer Darisse’s error of law was reasonable. The North Carolina vehicle code that requires “a stop lamp” also provides that the lamp “may be incorporated into a unit with one or more other rear lamps,” N. C. Gen. Stat. Ann. §20–129(g), and that “all originally equipped rear lamps” must be “in good working order,” §20–129(d). Although the State Court of Appeals held that “rear lamps” do not include brake lights, the word “other,” coupled with the lack of state-court precedent interpreting the provision, made it objectively reasonable to think that a faulty brake light constituted a violation. Pp. 12–13.
367 N. C. 163, 749 S. E. 2d 278, affirmed.
Roberts, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, Ginsburg, Breyer, Alito, and Kagan, JJ., joined. Kagan, J., filed a concurring opinion, in which Ginsburg, J., joined. Sotomayor, J., filed a dissenting opinion.
The powers of the police state never seem to decrease.
So the deal is...he can fabricate a reason as long as he thinks he can convince the court he thought it was reasonable, and that’s good enough.
IOW, the cop just makes up the rules as he goes.
Got it. Why bother having a legislature?
If the statute regarding “stop lamp” was from a period when cars only had one “lamp”, I don’t think this decision was incorrect.
The driver was stupid to consent to a search.
SCOTUS.
Makes me wonder why they would ever major in minor infractions when we have vastly more major legal challenges to the supreme law of the land!!!
true, but then the officer should not have the authority to ask to do so in the first place.
two words: Fourth Amendment
One law for them, another for us.
Dang, if this keeps up, it’ll put drug dealers out of business.
I’m not as worked up over this one. Police aren’t law experts, they enforce violations based on what they know and what their training is - if a cop is told to pull over cars with a single busted tail light, that’s what he’s going to do. I mean, I wonder how many of the likely hundreds of folks who got written up for a busted tail light by this guy- or any other cop, for that matter - over the years ever looked up the law and fought the citation?
The only reason this becomes an issue is because the subsequent stop resulted in a more serious charge, which the defendants are trying to get out of by suppressing the evidence. The lawyer finds this actual provision and tires to leverage it in a suppression motion.
In the end, it has to come down to whether the police officer was acting reasonably. In this case, I’d have to say yes, unless there’s reason to suspect that this one cop happened to know this arcane bit of law better than 99.99% of the public. (Though I bet he, and the entire LEO profession in NC know it *now*.)
In that respect, the precedent is limited.
Here’s how cops get consent:
“Now I can get search warrant. We’ll both be sitting here an extra hour and be in the same boat. And five other officers and a police dog will rip your car up. You consenting or not?”
On that we absolutely agree. However since the pretext for the stop was not legal, anything arising from it was tainted. The court seems to be unaware of the term "testilying".
I disagree. Like everything else that comes with the ever expanding police state, they use tiny tears in the fabric to eventually rend the entire garment. The evidence should have been thrown out, for the same reason mentioned above. We are constantly told "ignorance of the law is no excuse". We don't have to have any criminal intent anymore. Yet, the state is allowed to make any excuse it deems necessary.
I'm sorry, it just seemed so shallow for a Supreme Court that has so many more far reaching major constitutional issues revolving around the balance of power in this once most powerful republic that is governed by a democratic process.
That trillion dollar monstrosity they just passed through CONgress contained some frightening violations of the 4th amendment I am told.
So I'm not denigrating the 4th, I'm just commenting on the seemingly mis-placed priorities of the Supremes.
Of course it will be quite some time before anyone with enough resources to challenge the Trillion Dollar Budgetary Blind Blizzard of BS that just got sent to Al Obama to be signed into law!!!
Hard to tell if that was sarcasm or not. If they can't even keep drugs out of a prison, the perfect paradise of a police state, we're in no danger of that happening in the rest of society.
Bingo! That is one of the possible takeaways.
If reasonable men could disagree over the plain meaning of the language of the statute, the LEO may rely on the view most harmful to the citizen.
Ergo, those citizens charged with knowledge of the plain meaning of the law must also be aware of and proceed in accordance with alternative interpretations.
As some know, prior to dash cams, breaking brake light covers was a standard back up plan for over-aggressive officers who knew they lacked a valid reason for a motor stop.
well when the lower courts can’t reach a consensus ruling, they have no choice but to step in and say “This is the way it’s going to be”
And I disagree. You can’t expect your everyday cop to be 100% versant with the entire legal code, especially as large and complex as it is (another issue altogether).
The busted tail light wasn’t a crime, and the defendants are well within their rights to get that charge dismissed, but that doesn’t make the stop itself “not legal”. Frankly, a cop can pull you over for any number of reasons, from as simple as “acting suspiciously” - there’s no need for him to make up a violation just to get a pretext to search a particular car.
To argue that the whole stop was illegal would be to argue that the only reason he pulled the car over was to search it, but he wouldn’t have wanted to do that without some kind of suspicion in the first place. Was there any evidence that this particular car was targeted for a random search?
Which, by the way is something else I should also label: another issue altogether.
Had a co stop me once. Told him I was calling my lawyer as we were speaking. He said no lawyer was going to answer a phone call late at night. He was wrong. My attorney answered by the third ring; and I was on my way a minute or two later.
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