Alfred G. Harris Jr.v.The State
Alfred Harris was convicted of driving under the influence after an officer stopped him for driving around a traffic light through a gas-station parking lot. The officer believed that Georgia law prohibited the maneuver, but the statute did not treat taking that detour as running or disregarding a traffic signal. The Georgia Court of Appeals held that the officer’s mistake of law was not objectively reasonable and therefore did not create the reasonable articulable suspicion required for the stop. Because the stop was unlawful, the evidence obtained during it should have been suppressed. The court also reaffirmed that Georgia does not recognize a good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule that would preserve evidence obtained through the unconstitutional seizure. It reversed the denial of Harris’s motion to suppress and reversed his conviction.
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