Supreme Court Weighs Police Officer’s ‘Mistake of Law’ in Fourth Amendment Case

The
U.S. Supreme Court heard
oral argument today in Heien v. North Carolina, a case
which asks whether a police officer’s “mistake of law” can provide
the necessary justification for a traffic stop under the Fourth
Amendment.

The case arose in 2009 when North Carolina police stopped
Nicholas Heien for driving with one broken brake light. That stop
led to a search of Heien’s vehicle, which in turn led to the
discovery of illegal drugs. However, according to North Carolina
law, motor vehicles are required only to have “a stop lamp.” That
means the officer was mistaken about the law and had no grounds for
the original traffic stop. Did the officer violate Heien’s right to
be free from unreasonable search and seizure?

“The government should be presumed to know the laws,” declared
Jeffrey Fisher, the lawyer representing Heien before the Supreme
Court. “It would undercut public confidence in law enforcement and
the common law rule upon which the criminal law is built to say the
government doesn’t have to be presumed to know the law when it
acted.”

Robert Montgomery, the senior deputy attorney general of North
Carolina, took a different approach, urging the justices to grant
the police wide leeway—even in those instances when the officers
may have acted in error. “The Fourth Amendment prohibits
unreasonable searches and seizures, but it does not require that
police officers be perfect,” Montgomery told the Court. “Because
the touchstone of the Fourth Amendment is reasonableness, all that
is required is that a police officer have a reasonable view of the
facts and apply those facts to a reasonable understanding of the
law.”

Both sides came in for sharp questioning from the bench. Justice
Samuel Alito, for example, repeatedly pressed Fisher on why the
police officer’s approach should not receive more deference.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, by contrast, emerged as a critic of the
North Carolina police force. “How many citizens have been stopped
for one brake light who are asked to have their car searched?”
Sotomayor asked the state lawyer at one point. “And is that
something that we as a society should be encouraging?”

Chief Justice John Roberts, meanwhile, struck something of a
balance, suggesting that while reasonable mistakes of law by the
police can and will occur, the problem with the state’s case was
its “very broad definition of reasonable.”
“It sounds to me,” Roberts said, “like you’re
adopting the same
standard that we apply in qualified
immunity, which gives the officers quite—quite broad scope,
and that—that’s troubling.”

A decision in Heien v. North Carolina is expected by
early next year.