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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.
OK, so, "Profiling".
This guy fit a profile (I dunno what, I'm not a cop), so the cop found a reason to pull the car over. Asked the occupants a few questions, determined that he was right about his assumption, asked to search the car (the owner consented - dumb), and poof, a Cocaine bust.
Defendant sounds like a whitebread college prof. Wonder what the other guy in the car looked like. I'll go out on a limb and guess, "Definitively Not".
If this happened on I-85 in NC, that's a massive drug pipeline. That's a missing piece, right there.
Lessons learned? Don't traffic cocaine. Don't give police permission to search your vehicle.
Fred Reed wrote an interesting piece on this.
Uh, yes, I can. I am required to be conversant with the entirety of the code and all regulations pursuant to it. Why shouldn't agents of the police state?
If they get the law wrong, the fruits of their actions should be considered tainted. If that means the occasional guilty person has to go free, then that's the price we pay for allegedly living in a "free" society.
Perhaps if the state would like to make things easier on it's poor put upon dragoons, it might make some efforts to reduce the size and complexity of the law.
It mentions that after answering some quetions the officer became suspicious of two individuals in the car.
You have 5th Amendment rights. Any lawyer will tell you do not answer questions posed by the police without a lawyer present. Ever!
Envoking the 5th is not an admission of guilt.
These guys are criminals and deserve what they got, but because of them our rights are affected. Its just better to keep your mouth shut.
““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?””
My response to a cop that said nearly exactly that: “So, you are threatening violence in an attempt to extort a search? Seems any evidence you find under such a threat would render that evidence useless in court. An attorney will be here in 20 minutes. You can explain your extortion to him and to the DA in the criminal complaint.”
He’s not a cop anymore.
Did any of the people responding here in FR land actually read the article. If you did you may want to read it again.
I agree that the Sotomayor dissent has very valid arguments, but could be boiled down to two things that happened in this traffic stop. Either, by themselves, are technicalities, but combined, they are exceptional and should not be tolerated.
1) The law was unclear whether a driver had to have two working taillights. A reasonable interpretation of the antiquated law was that they only needed one to legally operate. (As a side note, in Germany, if a vehicle has a light, even an interior light, it *must* be functional or it is unlawful. This is not the case in the US.)
2) Once the car had been pulled over, the officer made a *subjective* determination that their behavior was suspicious based on the actions of the two passengers and their answers to his questions. By itself, this happens a lot, but is absolutely reliant on the officer having a legitimate reason to involve himself and solicit questions.
Now, one or the other of these things would be tolerable, either an incorrect interpretation of the law, *or* a subjective determination for search. But both together are unacceptable. If the law was clear, the officer could involve himself. But he cannot act on supposition based on a shaky foundation of the law.
(It should also be noted that the defendants seriously erred by giving permission for a search of their vehicle. Doing this erased some of the officers errors. Had they refused, and been searched involuntarily, they would have had a much stronger case.)
It’s hard to admit, but there are zero true conservatives on the SCOTUS. The Scalia wing are authoritarians. These law&order types passed for conservative back in the ‘70s & ‘80s. But, they’re just another flavor of statist.
It allows cops to be human. If a cop could reasonably believe X is the law, then stopping someone for doing X is not a horrible thing. It actually does work both ways. More than one law has been thrown out by courts for being too vague to enforce.
“However since the pretext for the stop was not legal, anything arising from it was tainted.”
Ah yes, the ‘tainted fruit’ theory that conservatives used to get upset about instead of endorsing.
If the stop was for what a reasonable person could conclude was justified, then illegal activity it uncovers is not tainted.
“Roberts, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, Ginsburg, Breyer, Alito, and Kagan, JJ., joined.”
When the only justice who agrees with you is Sotomayor, you are in pee-poor legal company!
I met a cop who tried to pull over a car for ‘acting suspicious’. IIRC, his suspicion was nothing more than 3 really big guys crammed in the back seat while the front had only the driver.
The car ran. When they finally got it stopped (and searched), they found stolen military grenades and fully automatic weapons in the trunk. All three guys in the back were armed felons.
In spite of my ‘white privilege’, I’ve been pulled over for something that struck the cop as suspicious. We chatted for a few minutes and I went on my way. Maybe I should have cussed at him, and then floored it...what do you think?
Ironically, today is Bill Of Rights Day.
(It should also be noted that the defendants seriously erred by giving permission for a search of their vehicle. Doing this erased some of the officers errors. Had they refused, and been searched involuntarily, they would have had a much stronger case.)
I suspect one of the reasons this case was accepted by the court was because of how incredibly weak it was due to the defendant's stupidity.
“Don’t Talk to Police”. See it on YouTube. The idiot in the car had all the undisputed constitutional protection he needed in the 5th Amendmemt. All he had to do was keep his mouth shut. The cop gamed the system no doubt, he sounds darn smart, not righteous but smart. But he got lucky and pulled over a moron.
I just can’t see getting upset over this one.
Some of us have been consistent in maintaining that such rules are not mere 'technicalities', but are fundamental to the maintennence of our freedom.
When the only justice who agrees with you is Sotomayor, you are in pee-poor legal company!
Normally I'd agree with you, but even the blind squirrel finds an acorn now and then.
Sadly we don't have a single member of the court that is willing to consistently stand up for freedom.
Sadly, no day is bill of rights day anymore.
“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.
PFL
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