A Cop’s Corruption Allegedly Cost an Innocent Man 2 Years of His Life. Should She Get Qualified Immunity?
General skepticism toward qualified immunity, the legal doctrine that makes it difficult to sue rights-violating state and local government officials, has over the years brought together weird coalitions, to put it mildly, and challenged some of the stereotypes about traditional partisan fault lines. A federal judge this week floated one such alliance: If you hated Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court precedent that enshrined abortion as a constitutional right, then you should really disdain qualified immunity.
Stay with me here. That connection came nestled in an opinion concerning a police detective who allegedly cost an innocent man almost two years of his life by using a nearly-incomprehensible statement from someone in jail, who was reportedly under the influence of meth, and then guiding that same person to pick her chosen defendant, Desmond Green, out of a photo line-up—after her witness explicitly picked someone else. As a result, Green was arrested for capital murder and spent 22 months in the Hinds County Detention Center, which he claims was infested with rodents and where his cellmate was stabbed.
He sued. Detective Jacquelyn Thomas of the Jackson Police Department countered that she was entitled to qualified immunity, which shields state and local government employees from civil suits if they violated the law in a way that has not been “clearly established” as unconstitutional in prior case law.
Judge Carlton Reeves of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi disagreed, ruling that such blatant misconduct indeed violated clearly established law. That the officer in question could reasonably assert such a defense, though—and drag out litigation for years with appeals, where it is plausible she will win at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit—opened a window to discuss the doctrine of qualified immunity as a general matter, encouraged by Green’s lawsuit, which asserts it is “unsound law.” Reeves took the opportunity.
In 1871, Congress passed Section 1983, which established an avenue for victims of civil rights violations to file federal lawsuits. Qualified immunity did not exist as a defense from liability until the Supreme Court legislated a version of it into existence in the 1967 case Pierson v. Ray, in which the justices created a “good faith” exception to suits against state and local government employees accused of misconduct. The Court then strengthened that defens
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