It is important to know the law, especially in your state. If you know the law, you can protect yourself better against injustice. Furthermore, your ignorance of the law will not save you from the criminal justice system. That’s the standard we’re held to, but the Supreme Court ruled recently that police, enforcers of the law, will not be held to that standard. In an 8-1 ruling, the Court found that police that pulled over Nicholas Heien for a broken taillight and searched his car were justified, though North Carolina law does not consider one broken taillight as a violation of the law.
In Heien’s case, when officers searched his vehicle, they found cocaine. Heien felt as though, since a single broken headlight isn’t a violation, they had no right to search his car. He wanted the cocaine to be suppressed as evidence. However, the ruling handed down by will uphold the coke as evidence. The Supreme Court also refused to make a plan to limit the police’s power in stops.
Think Progress reported:
The case hinged on a question of “reasonableness.” North Carolina’s law requires that a driver have one working rear taillight, not two. But the law also has some other language that suggests “other” lamps be in “working order.” If there was any ambiguity about this statute, the North Carolina Supreme Court has cleared it up, holding that the “other” lamps language does not refer to tail lights.
This is a confusing concept, like many laws. The state argued that the police made a “reasonable” mistake in their conduct with Heien. The Supreme Court ruling is basically saying that the police are allowed to be ignorant of the law. They don’t need to know the law necessarily to make stops and bust heads. As it stands, Fourth Amendment scholar Orin Kerr said, “if an officer can’t find a traffic violation to stop a car, he isn’t trying very hard.” Now, they have to try even less.
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