Supreme Court Rules You Have No 4th Amendment Protection Against Cops Ignorant of the Law
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.
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.”
“By
refusing to hold police accountable to knowing and abiding by the rule
of law, the Supreme Court has given government officials a green light
to routinely violate the law,” said John W. Whitehead, president of The
Rutherford Institute and author of the award-winning book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State.
“This case may have started out with an improper traffic stop, but
where it will end—given the turbulence of our age, with its police
overreach, military training drills on American soil, domestic
surveillance, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture, wrongful convictions,
and corporate corruption—is not hard to
predict. This ruling is what I would call a one-way, nonrefundable
ticket to the police state.”
In
April 2009, a Surry County (N.C.) law enforcement officer stopped a car
traveling on Interstate 77, allegedly because of a brake light which at
first failed to illuminate and then flickered on. The officer
mistakenly believed that state law prohibited driving a car with one
broken brake light. In fact, the state traffic law requires only one
working brake light. Nevertheless, operating under a mistaken
understanding of the law, during the course of the stop, the officer
asked for permission to search the car. Nicholas Heien, the owner of the
vehicle, granted his consent to a search. Upon the officer finding
cocaine in the vehicle, he arrested and charged Heien with
trafficking. Prior to his trial, Heien moved to suppress the evidence
seized in light of the fact that the officer’s pretext for the stop was
erroneous and therefore unlawful. Although the trial court denied the
motion to suppress evidence, the state court of appeals determined that
since the police officer had based his initial stop of the car on a
mistaken understanding of the law, there was no valid reason for the
stop in the first place. On appeal, the North Carolina Supreme Court
ruled that even though the officer was wrong in concluding that the
inoperable brake light was an offense, because the officer’s mistake was
a “reasonable” one, the stop of the car did not violate the Fourth
Amendment and the evidence resulting from the stop did not need to be
suppressed. In weighing in on the case before the U.S. Supreme Court,
Rutherford Institute attorneys warn against allowing government agents
to “benefit” from their mistakes of law,
deliberate or otherwise, lest it become an incentive for abuse.
Affiliate
attorney Christopher F. Moriarty assisted The Rutherford Institute in
advancing the arguments in the amicus brief before the U.S. Supreme
Court.
Read more at http://thefreethoughtproject.
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