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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsSupreme Court Sides With Police In 4th Amendment Case Arising from Officer’s ‘Mistake of Law’
In a decision issued this morning, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the police in a case arising from an officers 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 Amendments guarantee against unreasonable search and seizure? Writing today for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts held that it did not. Because the officers 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 officers mistake of law, no matter how reasonable, cannot support the individualized suspicion necessary to justify a seizure under the Fourth Amendment.
http://reason.com/blog/2014/12/15/supreme-court-sides-with-police-in-4th-a
Ilsa
(61,695 posts)He could have killed the septagenarian when he tazed him and wrestled him to the ground. But Roberts et al thinks that is okay; no legal mistake made, no cause for correcting professional behavior or collecting damages.
Is it fascism yet?
ellenrr
(3,864 posts)Ilsa
(61,695 posts)of water that hasn't reached boiling yet.
ellenrr
(3,864 posts)altho I dislike that particular analogy, due to emphathy with frogs.
But I get your point.
We are moving gradually, (compared to Hitler , Mussolini, etc.) slowly, and - mostly- non-dramatically.
Depending on who you are.
For the family, friends , and community of a young Black man murdered by the police, then it is certainly dramatic.
but how many of the main-stream americans will know about any supreme court decision or be able to contemplate the implications....
rock
(13,218 posts)The story is a myth. http://www.snopes.com/critters/wild/frogboil.asp
On the other hand the underlying point is true! I prefer the tale of King Louis xvi and his gradual suppression that lead to his toppling. I believe if w had had a couple of more terms we might have seen similar events. He apparently had no sense for the water temperature. Oops, oh well the analogy still works.
Malraiders
(444 posts)to justify their attitude of seeing all citizens as criminals even as the cop makes up a convenient crime so the cop can harrass and intimidate at will.