The Massachusetts Appeals Court ruled today some evidence against a man charged with driving down I-93 while drunk and with a cracked windshield can't be used against him because he was initially pulled over for having black tape over "Spirit of America" on his license plate.
The trooper did not have any basis to stop the defendant; therefore the stop was improper and the evidence obtained as a result of that stop must be suppressed.
The Registry of Motor Vehicles continues to insist it is illegal to cover up the inane slogan despite a 1977 Supreme Court decision doing something like that is not.
The judge hearing the man's trial initially rejected all evidence from the stop because, he ruled, the intent of state law is to keep the numbers on a plate visible, not slogans. The appellate justices agreed the evidence needs to be tossed, but said it was because state law does not specifically mention tape, unlike license-plate covers or frames, which it does.
The justices wrote that while a mistake may not always be enough to suppress evidence - a trooper could be held blameless for precisely following an incorrect Registry regulation - in this case the issue was that the regulation itself gave the trooper absolutely no basis for stopping the van in the first place because it doesn't mention tape.
In addition to giving motorists the right to argue they can tape over the slogan, the ruling could make it harder for prosecutors to prove their case the man was caught driving drunk for the third time.
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