OFF THE WIRE
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
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.”
The Rutherford Institute’s amicus brief in Heien v. North Carolina is available at www.rutherford.org.
“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.
This press release is available at www.rutherford.org.
Click here to read The Rutherford Institute’s amicus brief in Heien v. State of North Carolina
Read
more at
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/supreme-court-rules-citizens-protection-violations-cops-ignorant-law/#WQIIeyzy6wJGOUyV.99
