Policing and Public Transportation (2022)

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14 TCRP LRD 58 gave the officer reasonable suspicion to stop the car, the trial court denied Heien’s motion to suppress the evidence. After the trial court’s ruling, Heien pleaded guilty but reserved the right to appeal the trial court’s ruling on the suppression motion. The North Carolina Court of Appeals reversed the trial court’s ruling, holding that under the North Carolina statute “driving with only one working brake light was not actually a violation of North Carolina law.”135 Thus, “[t]he justification for the stop was . . . ‘objectively unreasonable,’ and the stop violated the Fourth Amendment.”136 The Supreme Court of North Carolina reversed the appeals court and remanded the case, because “Sergeant Darisse could have reasonably, even if mistakenly, read the vehicle code to re- quire that both brake lights be in good working order.”137 “An officer may make a mistake, including a mistake of law, yet still act reasonably under the circumstances. ... [W]hen an officer acts reasonably under the circumstances, he is not violating the Fourth Amendment.”138 In an opinion by Chief Justice Roberts, the Supreme Court affirmed the judgment of the Supreme Court of North Carolina. The Court held that, because “the officer’s mistake about the brake-light law was reasonable, . . . the stop . . . was lawful under the Fourth Amendment.”139 An officer’s “reasonable sus- picion can rest on a mistaken understanding of the scope of a legal prohibition.”140 Justice Roberts wrote that, just as “searches and seizures based on mistakes of fact can be reasonable,” so can searches and seizures based on mistakes of law be reason- able.141 Justice Roberts relied on precedents “dating back two centuries [that] support treating legal and factual errors alike in this context.”142 The Court held in Heien that “the mistake of law relate[d] to the antecedent question of whether it was reasonable for an officer to suspect that the defendant’s conduct was illegal. If so, there was no violation of the Fourth Amendment in the first place.”143 “[B]ecause the mistake of law was reasonable, there was reasonable suspicion justifying the stop.”144 Although the Court in Heien “clearly expanded the leeway offered to police officers under the Fourth Amendment,” cases, of course, differ on what is meant by the term objectively reasonable.145 Finally, in light of the Court’s decisions in Heien and in Taylor, supra, whether an officer’s mistake of fact or law is a constitutional violation that is redressable by § 1983 depends on 135 Heien, 574 U.S. at 58, 135 S. Ct. at 535, 190 L. Ed.2d at 481. 136 Id., 574 U.S. at 59, 135 S. Ct. at 535, 190 L. Ed.2d at 481 (citation omitted). 137 Id. 138 Id. (citation omitted). 139 Id. 574 U.S. at 57, 135 S. Ct. at 534, 190 L. Ed.2d at 480. 140 Id., 574 U.S. at 60, 135 S. Ct. at 536, 190 L. Ed.2d at 482. 141 Id., 574 U.S. at 61, 135 S. Ct. at 536, 190 L. Ed.2d at 482. 142 Id., 574 U.S. at 62, 135 S. Ct. at 536-537, 190 L. Ed.2d at 483. 143 Id., 574 U.S. at 66, 135 S. Ct. at 539, 190 L. Ed.2d at 485. 144 Id., 574 U.S. at 68, 135 S. Ct. at 540, 190 L. Ed.2d at 487. 145 Henning, supra note 127, at 326. IV. WHETHER A POLICE OFFICER’S MISTAKE OF FACT OR LAW IS A VIOLATION OF THE FOURTH AMENDMENT The Supreme Court has answered the question of whether a police officer’s search or seizure of a person based on the offi- cer’s reasonable mistake of fact or law is a violation of the Fourth Amendment. As one legal scholar concludes, the “Court has recognized that police mistakes are inevitable and, to varying degrees, tolerated.”127 As noted in Section III, supra, a federal district court held in 2014 that “[q]ualified immunity shields an official even if her conduct resulted from ‘a mistake of law, a mistake of fact, or a mistake based on mixed questions of law and fact.’”128 When an officer makes a mistake of fact, the Supreme Court has held that it is necessary to assess “the reasonableness of the officer’s conduct in light of the information available to the of- ficer” at the time of the search or seizure.129 Thus, “the Fourth Amendment is not violated when information becomes avail- able after the fact that shows that the officer was mistaken about the facts.”130 “The reasonableness of the officer’s conduct, viewed from an objective standard, permits the allowance of mistakes.”131 However, in several cases, the Court has held that a police officer complied with the Fourth Amendment’s rea- sonableness requirement even when the officer wrongly under- stood what the facts were.132 As for a mistake of law, in 2014, in Heien v. North Carolina,133 the Supreme Court held that a police officer may make an “ob- jectively reasonable mistake of substantive law” without violating the Fourth Amendment.134 In Heien, a traffic officer (Sergeant Darisse) had observed a motorist’s vehicle with an inoperative brake light. When the officer stopped the car, he became suspi- cious because of the driver’s and the passenger’s conduct and their inconsistent answers to his questions. The passenger in the car and its owner gave the officer, who was by then accompanied by another officer, permission to search the car. After the search uncovered a bag of cocaine, the officers arrested both men. The defendant Heien, who was charged with attempted traf- ficking of cocaine, moved to suppress the evidence on the basis that the arrest and search violated the Fourth Amendment. When Sergeant Darisse first observed the vehicle with an in- operative brake light, he erroneously concluded that the driver was violating North Carolina law. Because the faulty brake light 127 Karen McDonald Henning, “Reasonable” Police Mistakes: Fourth Amendment Claims and the “Good Faith” Exception after Heien, 90 St. John’s L. Rev. 271, 272 (2016) [hereinafter Henning]. 128 Brietkopf, 41 F. Supp.3d at 243-244 (citations omitted) (emphasis supplied). 129 Henning, supra note 127, at 276 (footnote omitted). 130 Id. (footnote omitted). 131 Id. at 277. 132 Id. 133 574 U.S. 54, 135 S. Ct. 530, 190 L. Ed.2d 475 (2014). 134 Henning, supra note 127, at 272 (footnote deleted) (emphasis supplied).