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!!!
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.
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.
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.
Ironically, today is Bill Of Rights Day.
“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.
I don’t see much problem with this decision as it seems to be consistent with precedent and reasonableness, especially in the light of a statute that could be construed ambiguously.