Comment Re:What the hell? (Score 1) 653
And also given the fact that a vast majority of them are punctuated with discretionary conditions in them, such as "what an average person would believe" or "Probable Cause" or "Credible Suspicion", etc., who is to say definitively? Afterall, the officer has sole discretion in interpretation of these conditions.
On the scene, yes. But officers have to make instant decisions with limited information then the courts get as much time as they want and as much information as they want to determine whether the officer was right or not. If an officer believes they have probable cause and uses that as the basis for a search and later a court disagrees, any evidence found in that search is inadmissible in any criminal proceeding. (Subject to certain exceptions and case law that is too detailed to go into here)