D.P.R.: Officers’ reliance on differing versions of weapons law was objectively reasonable

The Spanish and English versions of a section of the Puerto Rico Weapons Law differ with “and” and “or” and reliance on whichever is objectively reasonable under Heien. United States v. Rosa-Ufred, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 49334 (D.P.R. Mar. 14, 2025):

But even if we were to deem that agents Loyola-Santos and Cazul-Claudio were mistaken in their understanding of the law and that a person with a firearms license in Puerto Rico (not included in the exceptions set forth in Sections 462a(e)(4) and 462a(e)(5) of the P.R. Weapons Law) may open carry his weapon and is only prohibited from brandishing the firearm, such a mistaken understanding would be excused pursuant to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Heien v. North Carolina, 574 U.S. 54 (2014). The U.S. Supreme Court in Heien considered whether a police officer’s reasonable mistake as to the law could give rise to the reasonable suspicion necessary to uphold a seizure under the Fourth Amendment. The agents in Heien stopped a vehicle for not having one of the two brake lights working. The agents eventually found cocaine in the vehicle and charged the defendant with trafficking cocaine. The lower court denied the motion to suppress the evidence found in the car but a court of appeals held that, because the state statute only required a single working brake light and there was no dispute that the vehicle of the defendant did have one working break light, the stop of the defendant and the subsequent seizure and arrest was unreasonable. Id. at 59. The U.S. Supreme Court disagreed. The Court expressed that the touchstone of the Fourth Amendment is reasonableness. Id. at 60. The Court explained that “[to] be reasonable is not to be perfect, and so the Fourth Amendment allows for some mistakes on the part of government officials, giving them ‘fair leeway for enforcing the law in the community’s protection.'” Id. at 60-61 (quoting Brinegar v. United States, 338 U.S. 160, 176 (1949)). The Court further explained that it had previously held that an agent who makes a factual mistake may nonetheless have reasonable suspicion to effectuate a warrantless stop. Id. at 60. And reasoned that “reasonable men [also] make mistakes of law [ ] and such mistakes are no less compatible with the concept of reasonable suspicion.” Id. at 61. But that because “an officer can gain no Fourth Amendment advantage through a sloppy study of the laws he is duty-bound to enforce,” the Fourth Amendment tolerates only mistakes of law that are objectively reasonable. Id. 66-67. Resting on the unclear language of the statute at issue in Heien, the Court determined that the officer’s mistake about the brake-light law was reasonable and that the stop was lawful under the Fourth Amendment. Id. at 67-68. It is my view that pursuant to Heien and the conflicting language of the statute, as well as considering the expressions of the dissenting Puerto Rico Supreme Court Justices in Báez López on the significance of a language that is exactly like the language in Section 462a(e) of the P.R. Weapons Law, any mistake by the agents on the scope of the concealment requirement in the statute would be objectively reasonable.