KY: Officer’s mistake of law on effective date of new traffic law was reasonable and stop not suppressed under Heien

Officer’s mistake of law on the effective date of a new traffic law was reasonable, and the stop would not be suppressed under Heien. Vincent v. Commonwealth, 2023 Ky. App. LEXIS 41 (June 9, 2023):

The instant case falls under Heien as it presents both an ambiguous or unclear statute and an objectively reasonable mistake of law.3 First, the officer here was laboring under a sudden confrontation involving application of a statute that had an unclear effective date. Determining when newly enacted legislation becomes effective is a complex calculus. The Kentucky Constitution provides that acts of the General Assembly become effective 90 days after the adjournment of the session in which it was passed, unless the act is declared an emergency with the reasons announced therefore. KY. CONST. § 55; Virgil, supra. As our General Assembly meets for regular session once per year, the effective dates change annually depending on when the General Assembly ultimately adjourns sine die. In fact, a review of the ten years preceding 2017 shows that the General Assembly adjourned sine die from its regular sessions on: April 15, 2008; March 26, [*11] 2009; April 15, 2010; March 9, 2011; April 12, 2012; March 26, 2013; April 15, 2014; March 25, 2015; April 15, 2016.

Notably, in those ten years, the effective dates for newly-enacted, non-emergency legislation were between early June and mid-July. An objectively reasonable person viewing this pattern would then expect a new law passed in the same year to be in effect sometime between early June and mid-July. And, “[a]s the [Fourth Amendment] makes clear, ‘the ultimate touchstone of the Fourth Amendment is “reasonableness.”‘” Riley v. California, 573 U.S. 373, 381, 134 S. Ct. 2473, 2482, 189 L. Ed. 2d 430 (2014) (quoting Brigham City v. Stuart, 547 U.S. 398, 403, 126 S. Ct. 1943, 1947, 164 L. Ed. 2d 650 (2006)).