2014-2015 SCOTUS CRIMINAL 4TH AMENDMENT CASE: REVIEW BY MARYLAND ATTORNEY CHARLES WARE OF:

HEIEN v. NORTH CAROLINA, Docket 13-604

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[The information discussed herein is not intended nor designed to be legal advice]

The Supreme Court of the United States ("SCOTUS") ordinarily reviews between 70 and 80 cases each term (a year).  The following is one of the Court's chosen 2014-2015 cases on review.  It involves the important issue of unreasonable searches and seizures under the Fourth Amendment.  The criminal case under review is HEIEN v. NORTH CAROLINA, Docket No. 13-604, Argument: October 6, 2014, SCOTUS:

Issue: Can a police officer's misinterpretation of the law provide the reasonable suspicion necessary to justify a traffic stop?

Court below (Supreme Court of North Carolina) held:

On April 29, 2009, Sergeant Matt Darisse arrested Nicholas Heien in North Carolina after a traffic stop that Darisse initiated based on his misinterpretation of relevant state statutes. When Heien tried to exclude evidence that resulted from the traffic stop during his subsequent trial, the trial court denied his request.

The North Carolina Court of Appeals reversed the trial court’s decision, holding that an officer cannot justify a traffic stop when a mistake of law serves as the primary justification for the stop. In December 2012, the North Carolina Supreme Court overturned the appellate court’s ruling.

The Supreme Court of the United States will now consider whether a police officer’s mistake of law can serve as the requisite reasonable suspicion needed for a constitutional traffic stop.

Heien argues that allowing police officers to base traffic stops on misinterpretations of the law would violate the Fourth Amendment rights of those stopped.

North Carolina, however asserts that just as police officers can execute constitutional traffic stops by relying on reasonable mistakes of fact, a police officer can justify a stop if it is based on a reasonable but mistaken interpretation of a statute.

The Court’s ruling implicates the Fourth Amendment practices of law enforcement, the right to privacy of individuals, and the right of individuals to be free from restraint. 

Discussion: The Fourth Amendment protects individuals from unreasonable searches and seizures. “Reasonableness” is the lodestar for courts assessing the constitutionality of warrantless searches and seizures made by the police. Consistent with the Fourth Amendment, a police officer may make a traffic stop if he has a reasonable suspicion that a law is being violated. However, what happens if the officer’s suspicion is based on a mistaken view of the law?

A police officer stopped Nicholas Heien after noticing that one of his brake lights was out. North Carolina law requires that vehicles must have “a stop lamp” and that “rear lamps” must be in working condition. After asking Heien some questions and checking his license and registration, the officer asked to search the vehicle and found a baggie of cocaine. Heien was charged with trafficking cocaine and sought to suppress the evidence that had been taken from his car, arguing that the initial traffic stop was unreasonable because the officer misinterpreted the law.
As a matter of first impression, an appellate court determined that the relevant statutes require vehicles to have at least one working brake light (which Heien’s car had) and ruled that the search of Heien’s car was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court of North Carolina reversed, finding that the traffic stop did not violate the Fourth Amendment since the officer’s mistake was objectively reasonable.
In Brinegar v. United States (1949), the Supreme Court explained that police officers must be given some room for operating under mistaken facts—as long as they are reasonable. For example, in Maryland v. Garrison (1987), police officers obtained a warrant to search Lawrence McWebb’s apartment on the third floor of a building without realizing there were two apartments on that floor. The Supreme Court upheld the search of Harold Garrison’s apartment on that floor (where evidence of criminality was uncovered), noting that the officers’ mistake of fact as to which apartment was covered by the warrant was objectively reasonable.
North Carolina argues that the same logic applies to mistakes of law, but Heien maintains that the reasonable suspicion standard leaves no room for an officer’s mistaken interpretation of the law.
[see, http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/cert/13-604/Heien v. North Carolina; http://www.nccourts.org/courts/Apellate/Supreme/Default.asp/Heien v. North Carolina; www.scotus-blog.com/case-files/cases/heien-v-northcarolina]
Charles Ware is a principal in the Maryland-based national trial law firm of Charles Jerome Ware, LLC, Attorneys and Counselors.  Ware, inter alia, is a former appellate attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C.  For any questions or initial courtesy consultation, contact Attorney Ware at (410) 720-6129 or (410) 730-5016, or email him at charlesjeromeware@msn.com.