Heien v North Carolina
Today you will be participating in a moot, or a mock session of the Supreme Court. You will be examining the
arguments, precedents, previous court ruling and the U.S. Constitution.
Within your group you will be divided into different roles.
1. Petitioner/Appellant: The person/organization/company who appeals the lower court decision to a higher court.
(Heien)
2. Respondent/Appellee: The person/organization/company who argues that the lower court decisions were correct.
(The State of North Carolina)
3. Supreme Court Justices (Choose 1 member to act as Chief Justice)
4. Journalist (Separate Group) Your job will be to record information from your assigned group.
Before we begin the actual moot court, you must understand the case. Take a moment and read over the
information provided to you and answer the following questions. Record your own answers on a SEPARATE
SHEET!
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What does the Fourth Amendment protect people from?
What is the exclusionary rule?
What is the essential question (issue) of the case?
What does each side want?
How did the lower court decide this case?
What does it mean if an officer made a mistake of fact?
What does it mean if an officer made a mistake of law?
What insight does the case Delaware v. Prouse give?
What insight does the case Michigan v. DeFillipino give?
What are the 2 strongest points for Heien?
What are the 2 strongest points for the State of North Carolina
Roles
1. Petitioner: (Heien)
a. Argue the case in support of Heien
b. Prepare a case brief
2. Respondent: (The State of North Carolina)
a. Argue the case in support of North Carolina
b. Prepare a case brief
3. Supreme Court Justices (Choose 1 member to act as Chief Justice)
a. Prepare 3 questions for each side to help you come to a conclusion
b. Once you have heard from both sides then you will take a vote to determine the outcome .
c. Prepare a majority opinion and dissenting opinion if applicable.
4. Journalist
a. Record information of what is going on in your moot court and describe the outcome and significance.
Heien v. North Carolina
Argument date: October 6, 2014
Background
The Fourth Amendment protects people against unreasonable stops and searches by the government; reasonable stops and searches are
permitted. Typically, stops and searches are performed by the police in order to make an arrest or find evidence of a crime. Courts
must decide which stops and searches are “reasonable” under the Fourth Amendment, and which are not. When making these
decisions, judges balance society’s interest in obtaining evidence of crime or preventing crime against the individual’s right to privacy.
Generally, police must have a reasonable suspicion that a person has committed a crime in order to stop him. The same rule usually
applies when they want to stop a car.
When a judge rules that a search or seizure was unreasonable, in many cases the evidence obtained as a result of that search cannot
be used in court against the suspects. This is known as the exclusionary rule. Its purpose is to discourage the police or other
government agents from conducting illegal searches, since they know that illegally obtained evidence will not be accepted by a court.
The exclusionary rule is not spelled out in the Constitution, and there has been debate about how it should be applied or whether it is
an appropriate way to discourage illegal police conduct in the first place. This case is about whether the Fourth Amendment was
violated by the police and, if so, whether the evidence found by the police must be excluded from trial.
Facts
Nicholas Heien was sleeping in the back seat of his car as his friend Maynor Vasquez drove them through North Carolina. A police
officer began to follow Heien’s car and noticed that one of Heien’s two brake lights was not illuminating when the brakes were
applied. The officer, knowing that North Carolina law requires that all vehicles have a functional “stop lamp,” pulled over Heien’s car
with the belief that Heien had violated this law. In fact, under North Carolina law, only one brake light is necessary to abide by the
“stop lamp” law and so the driver was not doing anything illegal.
After they pulled the car over, two officers questioned Heien and Vasquez about their trip and issued a warning citation for driving
with a defective brake light. An officer asked Heien if they could search the car, and Heien gave his consent. The officers discovered
a plastic bag of cocaine and arrested both Heien and Vasquez. They pled guilty to possession of cocaine, but argued that the initial
stop was unconstitutional and so the evidence of cocaine should have been excluded.
The North Carolina Court of Appeals held that, since the initial stop was based on suspicion of conduct that was not actually illegal,
the evidence related to the cocaine found in Heien’s car must be excluded from their trials. The North Carolina Supreme Court
disagreed with the lower court, saying that the Fourth Amendment only required that officers act in a reasonable way, and because
the officer’s mistake about the law was a reasonable one, the evidence of cocaine could be used.
Issue
If a police officer makes a traffic stop because of a mistaken interpretation of the law, is that stop unreasonable under the Fourth
Amendment?
Constitutional clauses, concepts, and precedents
Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall
not be violated....”
Mistake of fact vs. mistake of law
In order to stop a car, an officer must have reasonable suspicion that an illegal activity is taking place. But sometimes police officers
make mistakes. For example, the police might be mistaken about what the person is actually doing. Perhaps the officer thought he
saw someone make an illegal left turn, but the light was really green and the officer just could not see the stoplight clearly. This is
called a mistake of fact. Other times, the officer might be mistaken about whether an activity itself is illegal. This is called a mistake of
law. In this case, the officer made a mistake of law—he thought that it was illegal to drive with one brake light out. The Supreme
Court has ruled in previous cases that officers making reasonable mistakes of fact are not violating the Fourth Amendment, but they
have not ruled on whether the same is true for reasonable mistakes of law.
Delaware v. Prouse (1979)
An officer pulled over a car and seized marijuana that he saw inside. The owner of the car argued that the initial stop violated his
Fourth Amendment rights. The police officer testified that he had pulled over the car to check the driver’s license and registration.
The state did not have a law allowing officers to pull over cars in order to do a license and registration check. The Supreme Court
said that the stop violated the Fourth Amendment and that therefore the marijuana evidence should be excluded from trial because
there was no law that authorized the initial stop.
Michigan v. DeFillippo (1979)
A man was arrested for violating a local law that was later declared to be unconstitutional. During the arrest, police found drugs. The
Supreme Court said that the arrest was valid even though the law that allowed the arrest was unconstitutional, because the police
officers made the arrest based on their good faith belief that the law was valid. The Court reasoned that the exclusionary rule should
be used only where it could help to deter officers in the future from violating a person’s rights.
Arguments for Heien

Ignorance of the law is not an excuse for criminals, and it shouldn’t be an excuse for police officers either. In order for a
stop to be reasonable, the officer must suspect an actual violation of the law.

Mistakes of law and mistakes of fact should be treated differently. We expect police officers to get the facts wrong
sometimes because human senses can be inaccurate, but the law is meant to be precise. Police officers can receive training to
make sure they know what is and is not against the law in their jurisdiction, but no additional training could stop mistakes of
fact.

If police know that evidence won’t be excluded if they misinterpret the law, they will be overly aggressive in their
interpretations of laws. They might start stopping and searching people on very flimsy reasoning. Police departments would
even have a disincentive to provide proper training on the law.

This case is like Delaware v. Prouse. Just as in that case, an officer pulled over a car even though there was no state law that
allowed the officer to do so. The Supreme Court that the evidence found in that case was not allowed, and that reasoning
should apply in this case as well.

It is the responsibility of the legislature to decide what laws should be put in place and it is the responsibility of police
officers to enforce those laws. The police are not allowed to reinterpret or broaden laws created by the legislature.
Arguments for North Carolina

Sometimes laws are vague or difficult to understand. Though the officer in this case was wrong, he was not being
unreasonable and he did not make the mistake on purpose.

Fourth Amendment analysis requires considering actions from the point of view of a reasonable person, not a legal expert.
Everyone in this case agrees that it was entirely reasonable for the officer to think that a law had been violated.

As long as a police officer was not purposefully trying to violate someone’s rights, why would we want to exclude useful
evidence gathered by the police? We run the risk of letting criminals go free, punishing the police and society for a mistake.

This case is like Michigan v. DeFillippo, where an officer arrested a suspect for violating a law that was later found to be
unconstitutional. Even though the law was not valid, at the time of the arrest the officer had reason to believe that the
suspect was violating a law that the officer was responsible for enforcing. The Court held that the arrest itself was valid for
those reasons, and the arrest in this case is valid as well for the same reasoning.

Having working brake lights is an issue of safety, and most people would prefer that their car be stopped if an officer’s
purpose is to protect the safety of the driver and passengers.
Court Rules for a Mistaken Police Officer
By ADAM LIPTAKDEC. 15, 2014
NEW YORK TIMES
WASHINGTON — A police officer can stop a car based on a mistaken understanding of the law without violating
the Fourth Amendment, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday in an 8-1 decision.
The case arose from a traffic stop in North Carolina based on a broken brake light. But state law there required only a
single working “stop lamp,” which the car in question had.
In an opinion by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., the Supreme Court ruled that the officer’s mistake was reasonable
and so did not run afoul of the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches and seizures.
The case concerned a 2009 traffic stop near Dobson, N.C., conducted by Sgt. Matt Darisse. The car’s owner, Nicholas
B. Heien, who had been asleep in the back seat while a friend drove, consented to a search. Sergeant Darisse found a
sandwich bag containing cocaine.
Mr. Heien was charged with attempted drug trafficking, and he challenged the stop as a violation of the Fourth
Amendment. A midlevel state appeals court agreed, basing its decision on an interpretation of the state traffic law as
requiring only a single working brake light. The interpretation was not challenged as the case was further appealed.
The North Carolina Supreme Court nonetheless reversed the decision, saying Sergeant Darisse’s mistake about what
the law meant had been reasonable.
In Monday’s decision, Heien v. North Carolina, No. 13-604, the United States Supreme Court agreed. Chief Justice
Roberts noted that searches and seizures based on a police officer’s reasonable misunderstanding of the facts had long
been permissible. He said that reasoning applied to mistaken interpretations of the law.
Chief Justice Roberts wrote that the court’s decision “does not discourage officers from learning the law,” because
only objectively reasonable mistakes were permitted.
“An officer can gain no Fourth Amendment advantage,” the chief justice wrote, “through a sloppy study of the laws
he is duty-bound to enforce.”
Justice Elena Kagan joined the majority opinion but added a concurrence, which was joined by Justice Ruth Bader
Ginsburg. She emphasized that the state law in question “poses a quite difficult question of interpretation, and
Sergeant Darisse’s judgment, although overturned, had much to recommend it.”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented. She said the court’s ruling “means further eroding the Fourth Amendment’s
protection of civil liberties in a context where that protection has already been worn down.”
The majority’s approach will also, she said, contribute to distrust between citizens and the police. If police officers are
given leeway to interpret the law, she wrote, “one wonders how a citizen seeking to be law-abiding and to structure
his or her behavior to avoid these invasive, frightening and humiliating encounters could do so.”
Chief Justice Roberts conceded that the court’s decision at first blush ran afoul of the maxim that “ignorance of the
law is no excuse.”
On reflection, he said, the maxim holds the government and its citizens to the same standard where it counts.
“Just as an individual generally cannot escape criminal liability based on a mistaken understanding of the law,” Chief
Justice Roberts wrote, “so too the government cannot impose criminal liability based on a mistaken understanding of
the law.”
Conclusion
Do you agree with the Supreme Court’s decision? Explain your answer.