Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the dissenting opinion for the case of HEIEN v. NORTH CAROLINA. Justice Sotomayor's side of the case is toward the leeway given to officers, reasonableness inquiry, and the officer’s understanding of the facts of the written law. The sergeant's searched and seizure against Heien is only considered reasonable under the law if he had reasonable suspicion that Heien was breaking the law. If not then the sergeants actions were in fact against Heien's Fourth Amendment right. It's due to weather the laws facts were or were not violated. The case she puts up is that it's not under the officers understanding of the law, but the actual written law at hand, that should be considered upon making a decision in the/any case. Sotomayor states that officers superiority in the cases they handle, goes without being said, should not be held under their understanding justification of the law, but should only pertain to the actual law itself. As said in the summary of the case "the reason being that the Forth Amendment is flexible to an extent whereas law enforcers are eligible to base their actions reasonably even with mistakes of facts" Sotomayor believes this is wrong because the "friendship" between the judge and the officer will pull more toward 'their' actions and will in fact warrant a worst cause then under the actions of the actual law itself. Meaning that officers can 'get' someone under one offense, find another without a proper search and seizure, and hold them for the 'wrongfully gathered' evidence due to misinterpretation and 'one's own meaning' of the law. The law does not state that "the law is purely justified under a officer's interpretation and should be held as such, even though someones Amendment rights might get violated along the way". The circumstances under which the officer searched Heien's vehicle (even tho permission was given) and the events that unfolded, or even if such events had not unfolded, can be humiliating and laughable to a person(s) by means of ruining reputations and/or calling fourth an event that would not have happened under other circumstances, whereby should not have been conducted in the first place. Sotomayors last words on the matter were as followed and is not tampered with in means of different wording...
"To my mind, the more administrable approach—and the one more consistent with our precedents and principles— would be to hold that an officer’s mistake of law, no matter how reasonable, cannot support the individualized suspicion necessary to justify a seizure under the Fourth Amendment. I respectfully dissent. "
"To my mind, the more administrable approach—and the one more consistent with our precedents and principles— would be to hold that an officer’s mistake of law, no matter how reasonable, cannot support the individualized suspicion necessary to justify a seizure under the Fourth Amendment. I respectfully dissent. "