Posted on 12/30/2014 3:52:48 PM PST by lbryce
In a blow to the constitutional rights of citizens, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8-1 in Heien v. State of North Carolina that police officers are permitted to violate American citizens’ Fourth Amendment rights if the violation results from a “reasonable” mistake about the law on the part of police. The Rutherford Institute
4th amendment gone
Acting contrary to the venerable principle that “ignorance of the law is no excuse,” the Court ruled that evidence obtained by police during a traffic stop that was not legally justified can be used to prosecute the person if police were reasonably mistaken that the person had violated the law. The Rutherford Institute had asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hold law enforcement officials accountable to knowing and abiding by the rule of law. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the Court’s lone dissenter, warned that the court’s ruling “means further eroding the Fourth Amendment’s protection of civil liberties in a context where that protection has already been worn down.”
(Excerpt) Read more at thefreethoughtproject.com ...
And this is not about vengeance on the officers, simply not permitting their illegal act to perpetrate.
Please detail this accusation about the Rutherford Institute? Maybe the fact that they use the color red on their website makes them thus suspect? (We’d better revise the US flag to be merely white and blue.)
I Googled for “Rutherford Institute” “Communist.” They complain about Communists from time to time. Nobody’s flagrantly accusing them, except apparently you.
Sotomayer may have come to the right answer by the wrong method. But brute contrarian reasoning is no reasoning at all.
I posted before I saw your analysis. Thanks for the information and the clarification of the specific legal issues. I should have known better - an 8-1 decision is usually the correct decision.
Is this before or after he or she pummels you to the ground?
No, don’t buy it Steve.
Police actions always HAVE been subject to USSC review with much notable fallout. This is sophism.
>>“I do not consent to any search, officer.”<<
And record it.
I said FTP is communist.
Hmm, what if I “reasonably” believe that the police officer trying to perform the search is a jackboot serving a petty tyrant?
Does that justify me in “asserting my rights”, if you know what I mean?
And so what, that does not impugn the merit of Rutherford, whom, if you spent 2 minutes on their website, you would see argued the case before the USSC.
It is clear that the new meaning of reasonable based on feeeeeeeelings, following the election returns, has overcome the originalist one.
Thanks.
Anyone here supporting Free Thought Project is suspect.
Rutherford seems to have gone off the rails as well.
Counting how many that went against them? About which similar objections were raised and struck down?
There is a notable adage that the court follows the election returns. Obama got in twice.
Because of this single case? Please do more than cast coy aspersions.
Well, what is more distressing is that cops can use a “busted tail light” being a crime as an excuse for any search in the first place.
The intent of allowing a search if you have reasonable belief that a crime has been committed is to allow the police to search for evidence OF THAT CRIME. Not to allow them go on a fishing expedition because they find a citizen who may not have minded all his p’s and q’s. So, if a cop sees a car with a broken taillight, he already has the evidence he needs to cite the driver for that offense, and he has no cause to perform any additional search.
However they were not obligated to “most states.”
I frankly can sooner buy the argument that there shouldn’t BE any “exclusionary rule” than to have one and then have its promise tortured in this manner.
Most have three brake lights today, counting the high center one.
Maybe we should just have a moratorium on debating this one until we see it actually being cited as precedent by the Obama administration. Then we will be illuminated.
Oh wait a minute, I forgot Barack doesn’t need law. But yeah, he will have an excuse that he will get conservatives behind him for.
Yeah, I mean, if you see a piece of bloody clothing hanging out of the trunk, then hey, by all means, bust that sucker open and don’t wait for a warrant. However, at this point, they are clearly misusing what leeway they were given in order to make the amendment’s protections virtually nonexistent.
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