Supreme Court Sides With Police In 4th Amendment Case Arising from Officer’s ‘Mistake of Law’

[Lucille]

SCOTUS siding with the police state? Inconceivable!

http://reason.com/blog/2014/12/15/supreme-court-sides-with-police-in-4th-a


In a decision issued this morning, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the police in a case arising from an officer’s “mistake of law.” At issue in Heien v. North Carolina was a 2009 traffic stop for a single busted brake light that led to the discovery of illegal drugs inside the vehicle. According to state law at the time, however, motor vehicles were required only to have “a stop lamp,” meaning that the officer did not have a lawful reason for the initial traffic stop because it was not a crime to drive around with a single busted brake light. Did that stop therefore violate the 4th Amendment’s guarantee against unreasonable search and seizure? Writing today for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts held that it did not. “Because the officer’s mistake about the brake-light law was reasonable,” Roberts declared, “the stop in this case was lawful under the Fourth Amendment.”

Roberts’ opinion was joined by Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Samuel Alito, and Elena Kagan. Writing alone in dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor criticized her colleagues for giving the police far too much leeway. “One is left to wonder,” she wrote, “why an innocent citizen should be made to shoulder the burden of being seized whenever the law may be susceptible to an interpretative question.” In Sotomayor's view, “an officer’s mistake of law, no matter how reasonable, cannot support the individualized suspicion necessary to justify a seizure under the Fourth Amendment.”

Ignorance of the law is no excuse, unless you're a cop.

[BV2]

They are the law, that seems to be the history

[Christian Liberty]

SCOTUS siding with the police state? Inconceivable!

http://reason.com/blog/2014/12/15/supreme-court-sides-with-police-in-4th-a



Ignorance of the law is no excuse, unless you're a cop.

Is there anyone who's genuinely stupid enough to believe both sides of that sentence?

"Ignorance of the law is no excuse. But if you're a cop, you can be reasonably ignorant..."

Does anyone seriously think this system is just?

[Deborah K]

Is there anyone who's genuinely stupid enough to believe both sides of that sentence?

"Ignorance of the law is no excuse. But if you're a cop, you can be reasonably ignorant..."

Does anyone seriously think this system is just?

Did this case set a precedent? Because if it did, I don't see how they can rule against anyone else using ignorance as an excuse. Wait.....yes I can....n/m.

[Occam's Banana]

"Reasonable" ignorance of the law *is* an excuse ... but only if you're an Agent of the State ...

http://i.imgur.com/7yrJNOx.png


“Because the officer’s mistake about the brake-light law was reasonable,” Roberts declared, “the stop in this case was lawful under the Fourth Amendment.”

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/SCOTUS

[PierzStyx]

http://glenbradley.net/images/share/doug.jpg

[phill4paul]

From top to bottom the pillars of "Just Us" need to be brought down, crumbled into fine dust and blown away by wind and time so that future generations could not even begin to fathom that once upon a time we allowed such nonsense to invade our world.

[GunnyFreedom]

So wait, now cops can enforce anything they damn well please whether it's law or not?

How about THAT 'republican form of government?' :rolleyes: :( :weep:

[Henry Rogue]

Is there anyone who's genuinely stupid enough to believe both sides of that sentence?

"Ignorance of the law is no excuse. But if you're a cop, you can be reasonably ignorant..."

Does anyone seriously think this system is just?

Ignorance of the Law May Be an Excuse



You can get into legal trouble even though you don't know that what you're doing is against the law. That's because of the age-old rule that "ignorance of the law is no excuse." Does the rule apply to everyone all the time? No, not really.

When the Police Don't Know

Here's the scenario. A citizen approaches an undercover police officer in a public park and offers to perform a sexual act on the officer. The officer arrests the citizen under a state*law making it illegal to loiter in a public place for the purpose of soliciting someone else to engage in deviant sexual behavior. However, the officer doesn't know that the law is no longer good law - a court declared it invalid about 20 years ago.

Once the authorities realized the problem the charges against the citizen were dropped. The citizen then files a lawsuit for*false arrest*in federal court. Who wins? The police officer. In June 2010, the federal appeals court in New York decided that, because the law was still published (or "on the books"), the officer didn't act unlawfully by relying on the law when arresting the citizen. His ignorance of the law goes unpunished.


http://research.lawyers.com/ignorance-of-the-law-may-be-an-excuse.html
This is the second time i posted this article on RPF. I wish i could find where i posted it the fist time.

[phill4paul]

"I needed a warrant? Can I have an oopsie?"

[GunnyFreedom]

"I needed a warrant? Can I have an oopsie?"
Copping is easier than golfing, because you get unlimited Mulligans. :D

[phill4paul]

Copping is easier than golfing, because you get unlimited Mulligans. :D

Get outta my head. "Mulligan" was what I originally thought. Lol.

[anaconda]

Sotomayer's comment seems quite sagacious.

The obvious problem is that now a cop can illegally search anyone for any bizarre reason and simply claim it was a "mistake." Why open a giant can of worms in the courtroom trying to ascertain whether something was a mistake or a knowing misapplication of law? The search should have been thrown out. The probable cause did not exist. Period. It was only imagined by the officer.

[GunnyFreedom]

Sotomayer's comment seems quite sagacious.

In what universe did you ever expect to utter THOSE words? :D

[Mani]

So they are no longer enforcers of the law. They are enforcers of what they THINK is the law. That's all the matters now. If a cop thinks u are breaking the law....it doesn't matter anymore what is the law.


I like how cops used to say, "Hey, I only enforce the laws, if you don't like them change them..." Now it's more like, "Hey I enforce the laws, if I don't like them, fuck you, and down and the ground before I beat the fuck out of you. I interpret the law as I see fit."

[tod evans]

So they are no longer enforcers of the law. They are enforcers of what they THINK is the law. That's all the matters now. If a cop thinks u are breaking the law....it doesn't matter anymore what is the law.


I like how cops used to say, "Hey, I only enforce the laws, if you don't like them change them..." Now it's more like, "Hey I enforce the laws, if I don't like them, fuck you, and down and the ground before I beat the fuck out of you. I interpret the law as I see fit."

Hey,

Judges have been legislating from the bench for decades, now the kops decide to get in on the fun too....

Don't look for any stink to be raised from any other branch of government, it'll only draw the spotlight onto them......

[GunnyFreedom]

It appears as though SCOTUS has officially decided that the police really are "The Law."

http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view2/1482056/judge-dredd-o.gif

[tangent4ronpaul]

So they are no longer enforcers of the law. They are enforcers of what they THINK is the law. That's all the matters now. If a cop thinks u are breaking the law....it doesn't matter anymore what is the law.


I like how cops used to say, "Hey, I only enforce the laws, if you don't like them change them..." Now it's more like, "Hey I enforce the laws, if I don't like them, fuck you, and down and the ground before I beat the fuck out of you. I interpret the law as I see fit."

CANCEL OP COP DOSE!

DO NOT Dose the Christmas party punch bowls with the LSD!

:D

-t

[Weston White]

What is going on with Justice Scalia lately? Isn't he normally against this crap?

[Weston White]

This is the second time i posted this article on RPF. I wish i could find where i posted it the fist time.

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?450761-quot-We-in-the-law-enforcement-profession-have-complete-power-over-you-quot&p=5508765&viewfull=1#post5508765

[Henry Rogue]

It appears as though SCOTUS has officially decided that the police really are "The Law."

http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view2/1482056/judge-dredd-o.gif
And in doing so, SCOTUS shows that they are also "The Law".
http://faculty.msb.edu/hasnasj/GTWebSite/MythWeb.htm

RPF thread > http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?451671-Tom-Woods-Rule-of-Law-is-a-Myth

[anaconda]

In what universe did you ever expect to utter THOSE words? :D


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ny7uGEPgoXk

[PierzStyx]

It appears as though SCOTUS has officially decided that the police really are "The Law."

http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view2/1482056/judge-dredd-o.gif

http://reelmovienation.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Karl-Urban-as-Judge-Dredd.jpg

[Lucille]

http://www.theburningplatform.com/2014/12/17/ignorance-is-no-excuse-for-wrongdoing-unless-youre-a-cop/


Guest Post by John W. Whitehead


“[I]f the individual is no longer to be sovereign, if the police can pick him up whenever they do not like the cut of his jib, if they can ‘seize’ and ‘search’ him in their discretion, we enter a new regime.”—U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, dissenting in Terry v. Ohio (1968)

With Orwellian irony, the U.S. Supreme Court chose December 15, National Bill of Rights Day to deliver its crushing blow to the Fourth Amendment. Although the courts have historically held that ignorance of the law is not an excuse for breaking the law, in its 8-1 ruling in Heien v. State of North Carolina, the Supreme Court gave police in America one more ready excuse to routinely violate the laws of the land, this time under the guise of ignorance.

The Heien case, which started with an improper traffic stop based on a police officer’s ignorance of the law and ended with an unlawful search, seizure and arrest, was supposed to ensure that ignorance of the law did not become a ready excuse for government officials to routinely violate the law.

It failed to do so.
[...]
I’m not sure which is worse: law enforcement officials who know nothing about the laws they have sworn to uphold, support and defend, or a constitutionally illiterate citizenry so clueless about their rights that they don’t even know when those rights are being violated.

This much I do know, however: going forward, it will be that much easier for police officers to write off misconduct as a “reasonable” mistake.

Understanding this, Justice 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.” Sotomayor continues:


Giving officers license to effect seizures so long as they can attach to their reasonable view of the facts some reasonable legal interpretation (or misinterpretation) that suggests a law has been violated significantly expands this authority. One wonders how a citizen seeking to be law-abiding and to structure his or her behavior to avoid these invasive, frightening, and humiliating encounters could do so.

There’s no need to wonder, because there is no way to avoid these invasive, frightening, and humiliating encounters, not as long as the courts continue to excuse ignorance and sanction abuses on the part of the police.