An Officer's Reasonable Mistake of Law and Recent Court of Appeals Ruling

The United States Supreme Court in 2014 ruled in Heien v. North Carolina, 135 S. Ct. 530 (affirming State v. Heien, 366 N.C. 271 (2012)), that an officer’s objectively reasonable mistake of law in making a stop or arrest is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. Last week, the North Carolina Court of Appeals ruled in State v. Eldridge (September 20, 2016), that officer’s mistake of law when making a stop of a vehicle was not objectively reasonable based on the facts in that case. The Eldridge ruling is the subject of this post. Reasonable mistake of fact and reasonable mistake of law. Reasonable mistake of law and reasonable mistake of fact are two separate legal theories. The United States Supreme Court and North Carolina appellate courts have long recognized that an officer’s objectively reasonable mistake of fact when deciding to make an investigative stop or an arrest may still allow a court to determine that the investigative stop or arrest was reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. Examples include an officer’s objectively reasonable mistake of fact about a vehicle driver’s identity, State v. Williams, 209 N.C. App. 255 (2011), or the identity of a person to be arrested. Hill v. California, 401 U.S. 797 (1971); State v. Lynch, 94 N.C. App. 330 (1989). As noted above, the U.S. Supreme Court in 2014 recognized reasonable mistake of law in Heien v. North Carolina. An officer in Heien had stopped a vehicle based on a nonfunctioning brake light. The evidence indicated that although the [...]