Tuesday, December 16, 2014

The US Supreme Court has let us down, again "Police can stop you for violating nonexistent laws they think are real"

In a ruling released on Monday for Heien v. North Carolina, http://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2014/10/north-carolina-cop-in-hometown-of-andy.html   the Supreme Court decided with an 8-1 vote that police are justified in stopping citizens for actions they "reasonably" believe are illegal, even if the officers' understanding of the law is significantly or entirely mistaken.

(And when did the Supreme Court forget the definition of Probable Cause?)

 The specific case under consideration concerned a traffic stop over a broken tail light, which led to discovery of drugs in the car. But since North Carolina only requires drivers to have a single "stop lamp," the driver arguably should never have been stopped at all.

 In the lone dissenting opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, "One is left to wonder why an innocent citizen should be made to shoulder the burden of being seized whenever the law may be susceptible to an interpretative question." The full majority and dissenting opinions are available here. http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/13-604_ec8f.pdf

Found on http://theweek.com/speedreads/index/273751/speedreads-scotus-police-can-stop-you-for-violating-nonexistent-laws-they-think-are-real

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote on behalf of the court that the officer's mistake in believing that it was illegal to drive with one working light was not sufficient to violate Heien's right to be protected from an unlawful search under the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment.

Under court precedent, a vehicle stop is valid only if the officer has "reasonable suspicion" that the driver broke a law. The court concluded in the North Carolina case that "reasonable mistakes of law" like those made by the officer in question do not make a search invalid.

Roberts rejected the argument made by Heien's lawyers that such a ruling would dissuade police officers from learning the law. He wrote that an officer "can gain no Fourth Amendment advantage through a sloppy study of the laws he is duty-bound to enforce."

Justice Sonia Sotomayor was the sole dissenter, writing that the court was "further eroding the Fourth Amendment's protection of civil liberties in a context where that protection has already been worn down."
http://news.yahoo.com/u-top-court-backs-police-car-brake-light-153707497.html

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