Granting certiorari, the United States Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case in which the North Carolina Supreme Court, on an issue of first impression for that court, held that the Fourth Amendments reasonable suspicion standard for justifying a traffic stop is not offended by a police officers objectively reasonable mistake of law. Here, a police officer stopped a car in which the defendant was a passenger after noticing that the right brake light was not functioning. A subsequent search of the car led to the discovery of cocaine, and the defendants conviction for drug trafficking. An intermediate appellate court reversed, however, after concluding that state law only required a vehicle to have one brake light, and thus the officers justification for the traffic stop was objectively unreasonable. A majority of the North Carolina Supreme Court disagreed with the intermediate courts interpretation of the reasonable suspicion standard, though the majority observed that various federal and state courts have come down on different sides of the question. The Court of Appeals for the Seventh and Eleventh Circuits, as well as the Minnesota Supreme Court, have held that an officers mistaken interpretation of substantive law cannot give rise to reasonable suspicion to support a traffic stop. Taking the contrary view are the Eighth Circuit, the Court of Appeals of Georgia, and the Mississippi Supreme Court.
Posted on: Sat, 26 Apr 2014 00:17:53 +0000
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