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This is not correct. Qualified immunity says that an officer can't be held liable for any actions that were not already established in case law as unconstitutio
by burkaman 6y ago
This is not correct. Qualified immunity says that an officer can't be held liable for any actions that were not already established in case law as unconstitutional. Since this precedent has been in effect for decades, that means that in order to convict an officer, you need to find some "precisely factually on-point caselaw" from before qualified immunity existed that holds the exact actions of the officer are unconstitutional.
Here's one example case, which the Supreme Court just declined to hear: https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/19/19-679/123466/20191122164334779_Corbitt.cert.pet.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/19/19-679/123466/2019...
> Officer Vickers and several other police officers pursued a criminal suspect into Amy Corbitt’s yard. Six children, including Corbitt’s ten-year-old son, SDC, were at play. Vickers and his fellow officers ordered the children—at gunpoint—to lie on the ground, face-down. The children complied. Meanwhile, the unarmed criminal suspect was readily compliant with the officers.
> While holding the children on the ground, weapons drawn, Vickers fired his gun twice at Corbitt’s pet dog. He missed the dog both times. The second time he fired, Vickers shot SDC in the back of the knee, seriously injuring him. SDC, still lying face down on the ground at Vickers’ order, was eighteen inches away from Vickers.
> Corbitt filed this suit, alleging that Vickers violated SDC’s constitutional rights. In particular, Corbitt alleged that, because Vickers faced no threat, his use of deadly force was unreasonable. Vickers sought dismissal, asserting qualified immunity. The district court denied Vickers’ motion, and Vickers took an interlocutory appeal. The Eleventh Circuit, holding that the plaintiff is obligated to plead around qualified immunity, concluded that the complaint failed to establish that qualified immunity is inapplicable.
Note that these are the facts as described by the court itself, not the petitioner's lawyers. Since there is no case on the record establishing that these exact actions are unconstitutional, qualified immunity means the court must assume the officer was acting in good faith and didn't know that shooting at children and a pet dog for no reason is wrong.
Edit - Here's another one of the cases the court just declined to hear: https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/19/19-899/128836/20200116111103542_West_CertPetition.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/19/19-899/128836/2020...
> QUESTION PRESENTED
> Whether an officer who has consent to “get inside” a house but instead destroys it from the outside is entitled to qualified immunity in the absence of precisely factually on-point caselaw.
I encourage you to read the case, but basically, the petitioner gave the police her keys and consent to go into her house to look for a suspect (after being threatened with arrest for "harboring a fugitive"). Instead, the police bombarded the house with tear gas grenades, destroying it and almost everything inside. The suspect was not there, and the police did not have any reason to believe he was. The petitioner and her children were homeless for two months, and were offered a hotel room for 3 weeks and $900 as compensation.
> The panel majority found that the officers were entitled to qualified immunity on the scope-of-consent question because “no Supreme Court or Ninth Circuit case clearly established, as of August 2014, that Defendants exceeded the scope of consent” when they took West’s permission to “get inside” her house as permission to bombard and destroy it. App. 13. After all, the majority reasoned, the officers “did ‘get inside’ [her] house, first with objects and later with people.” Ibid.
- GordonS 6y agoThe ability to get away with such blatant and disgusting abuses like these is surely a large part of why there are so very many cases of police brutality and overreach. If you can basically do whatever you want with no repercussions, it's no wonder.
- burkaman 6y agoYes, I also think it's part of the reason that body cameras haven't been effective yet. Police officers already know they can do anything they want with legal immunity, so they don't care that they're being filmed. You need body cameras combined with legal changes that make it possible to punish officers, or just get rid of police and start from scratch with a better foundation.
- blattimwind 6y agoUS justice system is a meme.
- JangoSteve 6y agoThese are really good illustrations of the quote from this article: > “Qualified immunity means that government officials can get away with violating your rights as long as they violate them in a way nobody thought of before,” said IJ Attorney Joshua Windham. https://ij.org/press-release/institute-for-justice-asks-u-s-supreme-court-to-hold-government-officials-accountable-for-destroying-idaho-home-with-grenades/ https://ij.org/press-release/institute-for-justice-asks-u-s-...
- burkaman 6y agoIt's even stronger than that. They just have to violate them in a way nobody thought of and was succesfully convicted of before 1967 when qualified immunity was established.
- x86_64Ubuntu 6y agoWow, all of those instances are ugly, but par for the course when considering US policing and it's allergy to acocuntability.