{"id":16786,"date":"2015-04-15T14:28:31","date_gmt":"2015-04-15T19:28:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=16786"},"modified":"2015-04-15T14:28:31","modified_gmt":"2015-04-15T19:28:31","slug":"slate-ignorance-of-the-law-is-a-complete-defense-if-youre-a-cop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=16786","title":{"rendered":"Slate: Ignorance of the Law [is a complete defense, if you&#8217;re a cop]"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Slate: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/articles\/news_and_politics\/jurisprudence\/2015\/04\/why_michael_slager_pulled_over_walter_scott_cops_who_don_t_know_the_law.html\">Ignorance of the Law<\/a> [is a complete defense, if you&#8217;re a cop] by Cristian Farias:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>So why did Slager pull over Scott? If what he said, as captured on the dashcam account, is to be believed, Slager made a mistake and decided to &#8216;seize&#8217; Scott for a law not in the books. In a perfect world, such errors should never give a police officer an opportunity to stop anyone. That perfect world was shattered in December, when the Supreme Court blessed the shady police practice of pulling someone over for breaking a law that doesn&#8217;t exist. The case was Heien v. North Carolina, involving the Fourth Amendment&#8217;s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures-the only shield against police overreach during close encounters with law enforcement. In an 8-to-1 decision, the court ruled that &#8216;reasonable&#8217; mistakes about what the law is can justify police stopping an otherwise law-abiding citizen.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Slate: Ignorance of the Law [is a complete defense, if you&#8217;re a cop] by Cristian Farias: So why did Slager pull over Scott? If what he said, as captured on the dashcam account, is to be believed, Slager made a &hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=16786\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reasonableness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16786"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16786\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16787,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16786\/revisions\/16787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}