Posted on 02/03/2015 8:55:29 AM PST by Oldpuppymax
In December of last year, the Supreme Court continued a decades-long tradition of chipping away at 4th Amendment rights by ruling that police may violate those rights “…if the violation results from a “reasonable” mistake about the law…”
In the case of Heien v The State of North Carolina, police sergeant Matt Darisse stopped a vehicle he considered “suspicious” because one of three tail lights was faulty. While writing a warning ticket, he then “became suspicious” of vehicle occupants and “their answers to his questions.” When vehicle owner Nick Heien gave Sergeant Darisse permission to search the car, the officer discovered cocaine. Heien was arrested and charged with trafficking.
Heien’s defense presented evidence to the trial court that the State of North Carolina requires a vehicle be equipped with only one working “stop lamp.” As Heien’s car was clearly in compliance, the defense argued that the traffic stop was an “objectively unreasonable” act on the part of Officer Darisse and that, according to the law, it should not have taken place. The defense then moved that evidence of the seized cocaine be suppressed on Fourth Amendment grounds.
But in an 8-1 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court disagreed, holding that the officer’s “…mistaken understanding of the law was reasonable and thus the stop was valid.” After all, “…the Fourth Amendment requires government officials to act reasonably, not perfectly…” wrote Chief Justice Roberts for the majority.
But Roberts is wrong and his “nobody is perfect” quip is not an acceptable excuse for ignorance of the law or a violation of constitutional rights. In fact it is when testing the limits of 4th Amendment protections that law enforcement must be...
(Excerpt) Read more at coachisright.com ...
Has anyone ever considered the odds of all these suspected drug dealers riding around with defective tail lights?
Or considered the known practice of cops busting a tail light of a suspected drug dealers car in order to stop him for a traffic violation and then follow up with a ‘smell’ test that discovers drugs. Or my favorite, the cops say that the dealer had drugs in plain sight in the car.
The number of these stops for tail light violations is absolutely staggering when you start looking into it. These drug dealers must be too stupid to read the newspapers or see the movies and take preventative measures like making sure their tail lights aren’t bashed in.
Once again this gross misrepresentation rears it’s ugly head. Time to kill it again with facts.
The ruling applies the same level of discretion to the LEO as in the Terry ruling (Terry vs Ohio), aka as a “Terry stop”. In that ruling, all that is required is “reasonable suspicion” to initiate a stop.
In this case the reasonable suspicion was that both tail lights needed to be working. This was incorrect but that does not invalidate the stop.
The perp then CONSENTED to a search of the vehicle which then turned up the evidence use to convict.
The perp then contacts a lawyer who then attempts to get the evidence thrown out due to the stop.
All this ruling has done is applied the same logic of Terry vs Ohio to a vehicle stop.
What hasn’t been said is that some attorneys, especially for DUI cases, have mastered the art of finding unbelievably niggling “police errors”, to the point where they bragged that they could get a judge to dismiss *any* DUI case.
And police car and personal video cameras made it even easier for them.
This is way beyond, “the spirit or letter of the law”, which is why the SCOTUS ruled the way it did. It is about fussing over technicalities.
In practical terms, the extent of relief for this driver should be that his ticket for the faulty taillight should be dismissed, because it is contravened in state law. But the other charges should stick.
His grave mistake was in agreeing for the police to search his car. Had he refused, he had a good chance of not being searched or arrested.
Likely other police would have arrived, told the first cop that the taillight was not in violation of the law, and that might have ended it, knowing that they had no authority to conduct a search.
And even his appellate case would have been stronger, had he refused the search.
But if the you bent over to tie your shoe and a baggie of white powder falls out of your coat pocket, some of the cop haters here would call it entrapment.
Roberts wrote the opinion but it was an 8-1 decision.
8-1 makes for an interesting decision. In any event, the requirement that evidence be suppressed based on 4th amendment mistakes has never been right. There are other remedies available besides those that harm society at large for the mistakes of a police officer. So this case is a tossup; a win for the taxpayers, a loss for the ACLU and the ATLA.
This reasoning leads directly to Michael Brown, and this is where you lost me.
The person WAS in violation of the law; he was transporting narcotics. He was not in any visible violation that the police could see when he was stopped for his tail lights, but he was in the process of possessing and transporting illegal drugs.
Regarding Michael Brown, his defenders also said that Brown was not doing anything wrong when he was stopped by the police. The truth is that Brown was in the process of fleeing the scene of a crime. There was even a BOLO out at the time, even though the police officers were not aware of it yet when they stopped Brown.
-PJ
You are correct, it was the CONSENT that sent it over the top. DO not consent, make them try to get a warrant, and do not say anything to the police person.
Had a female policeman pull me over, heard some bawling and asked what I had in the trunk. I said a baby goat and she was flummoxed. She finally asked if she could see the goat and I agreed. Baby goat in a pet carrier heading home. She didn’t stop laughing for awhile, I figure.
We need to overthrow the Supreme Court. This is probably one of the worst rulings in history.
And the lesson is... Don’t traffic cocaine.
News Flash: The Fourth Amendment is the Supreme Law of The United States of America.
And yes, violating the Constitution is a violation of the highest law there is.
Just watched the vid. That was great.
With your reasoning we have no need of any BOR protections- the government can do anything w/o constraint- not the state I would like to live in....
Stalin said “show me the man and I’ll show you the crime”- is he your role model?
LE has no reason to stop anyone unless they observe a violation or have sworn information about a crime about to be or being committed-probable cause, reasonable suspicion etc, at least last time I checked.
“Cops don’t need a reason to make a stop...; but the stop itself can be performed simply because the cop saw a reason.”
If cops use that cyclical reasoning/tautology and get away with making stops for no reason because they saw a reason, judges ought to have then decertified as LE and certified as threats tot he people as unstable and dangerous.
Seems your “long line of cops” lineage has made it an “us versus them” pathology in your mind(s).
We often feel that way too, BTW.
Project much?
Michael Brown was walking down the middle of the road when he was approached by the cops. Do you just let it go even though he was in violation of jaywalking laws while fleeing the scene of his crime?
This guy who was transporting drugs was not randomly stopped by a Stasi secret police intending to sustain an atmosphere of fear within the community. He was pulled over for a broken tail light and then the situation escalated from there.
I was responding to your characterization of this person as having been doing nothing wrong, when in fact he was doing something very wrong.
-PJ
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