Charlotte Criminal Lawyer Blog
J. Bradley Smith of Arnold & Smith, PLLC answers the question “Should I talk to the police?”
A recent United States Supreme Court has some legal observers complaining that police officers are entitled to mistakes of law, while ordinary citizens are not. The decision underlines, however, the ignorance many citizens have about their own rights under the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
As Maynor Javier Vasquez drove a Ford Escort north a little before eight o’clock in the morning on April 29, 2009, on Interstate 77 in Dobson, North Carolina, Sergeant Matt Darisse of the Surry County Sheriff’s Department—who was observing northbound traffic—thought the Vasquez looked “stiff and nervous.”
Sgt. Darisse pulled out and followed Vasquez, ultimately signaling for him to pull the car over. After he pulled Vasquez over, Sgt. Darisse explained that as long as Vasquez’s license and registration checked out, he would be let off with a warning ticket. Sgt. Darisse had pulled Vasquez over, the officer explained, because one of the brake lights on the Ford Escort was out.
That one shuddered brake light became a pesky issue on the years of appeals that arose out of the encounter that began between Sgt. Darisse and Vasquez. In the end, the North Carolina state appellate courts agreed that the brake-light statute, using the language “a” stop lamp, only requires one working brake light on a motor vehicle.