The Fourth Amendment showdown known as Heien v. North Carolina had modest beginnings: a police traffic stop in 2009 based on a car's broken rear brake light. In short order, passenger Nicholas Heien was busted for having a bag of cocaine — and was on his way to becoming a piece of U.S. legal history.
In December 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that Heien's drug conviction was valid even though he had broken no law by having a single malfunctioning rear brake light.
Here are five telling facts about this intriguing and controversial case.
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1. The Court decided the policeman who pulled the car over had made a "reasonable" mistake in trying to enforce a nonexistent North Carolina law, and that he did not violate the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against "unreasonable searches and seizures."
2. It's legal in North Carolina to drive a car with only one working rear brake light.
3. The only dissenting vote came from Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who wrote that the High Court was "further eroding the Fourth Amendment’s protection of civil liberties in a context where that protection has already been worn down.”
4. The officer, Sgt. Matt Darisse of the Surry County Sheriff's Department, was a veteran of the force who admitted that he was looking for a pretext to pull the vehicle over because he thought the driver appeared ill-at-ease and suspicious.
5. The driver of the car, Maynor Javier Vasquez, would emerge from the entire encounter with just a warning ticket from Darisse.
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