Friday, March 12, 2021
Supreme Court declines to hear case on qualified immunity for police officers
The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear an appeal for a lawsuit brought against Cleveland police officers that challenges the scope of qualified immunity, the legal doctrine which has been used to shield officers from lawsuits alleging excessive force, Reuters reports.
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qualified immunity and asset forfeiture, are the two most egregious and abused laws in the USA at every level of government.
ReplyDeleteNemo
Qualified immunity is the only way you can protect people when they make unpopular decisions. I'm a forensic pathologist, and part of my job is to tell people unpleasant truths -- that their teenage child committed suicide, that a dead infant was killed by someone, that a family member was a drug addict, etc.
DeleteParents don't like to hear things about their kids. Cops don't like to hear that the death isn't consistent with their theory of the crime. Spouses want deaths ruled "accident" so they can collect more insurance. And on and on. When you have political or legal liability, people tend to rule cases according to what is safe for them.
For instance, in a couple of states that switched from lay coroners to physician Medical Examiner systems in the late 1970s/early1980s, the suicide rate jumped about 30%. Why? Because elected Coroners didn't want to make rulings that would anger people and hurt their chance of re-election. When I worked in another state, a local lay Coroner routinely overruled my manner determinations in certain cases. I asked him why. He said that he was an elected official, the Sheriff was an elected official, the City Council were elected officials, and you had to go along to get along.
Major corporations sue Medical Examiners when they have findings that suggest that their products are unsafe. Families sue medical examiners when they don't like rulings of homicide or suicide. I have a colleague who ruled a child death a homicide. The DA declined to prosecute, and the family, backed by an advocacy group, sued the ME. Because the ME was a contractor, he did not have qualified immunity. It was a BS case, and he won, but it cost him is house and his retirement savings to pay for his defense. He got a "blue ribbon panel" of other pathologists to review the case, and they unanimously agreed that it was a homicide. So the family sued them for "conspiring" to defame them. Some of that panel had qualified immunity and did fine. Others were not so lucky, since they were contract workers in their jurisdictions.
Some years ago, TASER corp (now AXON) started suing MEs who ruled that TASER deployment played a role in death. I did a study on that. About 30% of MEs said they would modify what they do in order to avoid a lawsuit.
Even with qualified immunity, the Medical Examiner in the George Floyd case has suffered death threats and intimidation because he declined to rule the death an asphyxia death. Imagine the lawsuits from Progressive organizations if he did not have qualified immunity.
You want people to quit telling the truth and start saying what the big pockets went them to say? Remove their qualified immunity and that's what you will get.
Without QI, no one would be a cop
DeleteBillo, I always understood the basis for having the qualified immunity law. My contention, unstated, is that members of the law enforcement community get away with egregious law breaking and escape any kind of punishment while hiding behind the law after having committed crimes that would land a civilian so deep in jail they'd have to pipe light in. The cases are as numerous as the situations that you cited in your post justifying the need for the law.
DeleteIn your last paragraph you contend that without qualified immunity police and prosecutors will take their direction from people with money(or power). Guess what? That's already in place and has been since way before qualified immunity laws were passed. One of the reasons qualified immunity laws were passed was because members of law enforcement were being sued for things like excessive force AND THE PLAINTIFFS WERE WINNING. Can't have THAT now can we.
Qualified immunity is how you get the Derrick Chauvin's of law enforcement. Cops with numerous prior excessive force complaints against them that finally result in someone dying in their custody. Yah, George Floyd was a dirt bag, a convicted felon and drug addict, resisted arrest and had drugs in his system which, according to the Minneapolis ME, caused his death.
However, if Derrick Chauvin hadn't been so intent on teaching Floyd a lesson for resisting, for nine and half minutes, Floyd may have been able to be saved. We'll never know because Floyd died in police custody and Minneapolis and Portland and Seattle and Washington DC and numerous other U.S. cities burned and are still burning all because qualified immunity allowed Derrick Chauvin to continue as a police officer due to qualified immunity.
Nemo
Maybe we have too many lawyers.
DeleteNemo, you are making assumptions about how Floyd died that are incorrect. This blog, and others, are filled with indictments of the press and how they lie about every little thing -- yet you seem to be buying into their narrative about how and why Floyd died. There will be some things coming out in trial that *should* be bombshells, though I doubt you will hear it in the press. Whether or not the jury finds it convincing will be a different question, of course. But your assertions about Chauvin may need to be tempered.
DeleteAnd yes, if you pick your jury right and you have the plaintiff with the deep deep pockets and the defendant selling his house to pay for his lawyer, you will have a lot of cases where the plaintiffs are winning. That happens all the time. It's the basis of lawfare. In criminal cases, it's particularly true when the government decides to print money to prosecute a case. Look at what happened with LTG Flynn. Look at the jurors they put in place for the Roger Stone trial. As one state prosecutor told me over lunch once when I was lecturing at the FBI Academy years and years ago, "There are no innocent people. There are only untargeted people."
This also happens all the time in torts. It's the way you do lawfare. If one side has deep enough pockets to hire the celebrity experts and such, and the other does not, the cards are stacked. Small town cops are not on the winning side of this, no matter what the real story is. Yes, I know that Minneapolis is not a small town, but not all these cases are front page news in big cities.
Are there bad cops? Absolutely. I've done cases on both sides of this. I had a case a year ago of a guy who was arrested, stripped naked, and kicked to death by a bunch of cops (a so-called "boot party") because he was drunk and acting like an ass. You didn't hear about it, of course -- the decedent was white and the cops were mixed. But qualified immunity doesn't apply in those kinds of cases anyway. Qualified immunity does not apply when people move outside the confines of what they are allowed to do in their job. It does apply when they make decisions in good faith as part of their job.
There have been cases when qualified immunity has been granted incorrectly by a judge, but that's a reason to look at how and why it's applied, not to do away with it. The fact that there are boneheaded judges that apply the law in bizarre and incomprehensible ways is not a reason to do away with rule by law. And the fact that some judges grant qualified immunity in cases when it should not be granted is not a reason to do away with qualified immunity.
These dumb asses don't realize that the majority of the time the cops are protecting the criminals. Do away with them and the victims will do away with the criminals. We won't need jails any longer, just larger cemetaries.
ReplyDeleteI like the way you think. But why waste good open land to bury assholes. Turn them all into ash.
DeleteCremate them, bury the ashes in unconsecrated ground, and piss on the ashes.
DeleteIf you think crime and taxes are high now; just wait until qualified immunity goes away!
ReplyDeletePolice that won't BE ABLE to police due to lawsuits. And many jurisdictions will pay, just to make cases go away. Every thug will try to win the "Ghetto Lottery".
Are there some bad cops and some illegal uses of force? Absolutely.
How do we change that? Local political action.
When was the last time you and ten of your like minded friends met with your 'alderman, commisioner, police chief, sheriff, city manager, county manager, city lawyer, state attorney general, comptroller, or more senior political animals"? Have you or do you personnally know or met any of the political players in city, county, or state politics? Thye have regular meetings and are open to the public. And, outside of a few sketchy democrat areas, are usually begging for other members of the public to join and help.
You are not an island to yourself. Get motivated and get involved.