North Carolina V. Coleman Explains Heien V. North Carolina

On December 15, 2014, the United States Supreme Court issued a highly controversial opinion regarding Heinen v. The State of North CarolinaThe Supreme Court of the United States decided the matter of North Carolina on December 15, 2014. The holding of the case is that there is no violation of the Fourth Amendment when a law enforcement officer conducts a traffic stop or makes a seizure upon a an incorrect, yet reasonable, belief that the suspect has violated the law. The ruling in Heien creates a new exception for a warrantless search or seizure. The Heien standard is whether it is reasonable for an officer to believe that the conduct is illegal.

The Heien opinion gives great weight to the text of the statute itself. The Heien decision was based on on a poorly written, ambiguous, convoluted statute. In addition to the poorly written statute, at the time of the stop in Heien, no state court had ever ruled on the issue. Accordingly, when looking at the plain language of the statute, the police officer reasonably believed that he had witnessed a traffic infraction.. It is likely that the application of the Heien exception will be extremely rare and only applicable when the statutory text is complex or ambiguous and there is no case law on point.

The North Carolina Supreme Court ruled on the Heien case in 2013. As the Heien opinion is approximately 2 years old in NC, The North Carolina Court of Appeal has already ruled on at least one case involving the Heien exception. The North Carolina Court of Appeal rejected the application of the Heien exception in the case of State of North Carolina v. Rudolph Coleman. The Coleman case was reversed by the North Carolina Court of Appeal on numerous grounds. The North Carolina Court of Appeal specifically rejected the application of the Heien exception based on the plain language of the statute. The North Carolina Court of Appeal ruled that the open container statute was clear, unambiguous and that the officer's lack of knowledge did not make it "reasonable" in light of the Heien decision.

The full appellate ruling for the Coleman matter can be found at: Heien v. North Carolina - North Carolina v. Coleman

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