The 5th Circuit Rejects Qualified Immunity for a Child-Snatching Texas Cop Who Falsely Alleged Abandonment
Around 10 a.m. on a Friday in October 2018, 14-year-old Jade McMurry was confronted by two police officers, Kevin Brunner and Alexandra Weaver, at the door to the apartment in Midland, Texas, that she shared with her parents and her 12-year-old brother. Jade, who was homeschooled and in the midst of her online studies, did not understand what the officers, both of whom worked for the Midland Independent School District, were doing there. But within a minute, they had decided she needed to be rescued.
Brunner told Jade to put on warmer clothing so she could leave the apartment. As Jade began to follow Brunner’s instructions, body camera video showed, he asked her, “Do you mind if she [Weaver] comes in the house with you?” Jade’s response was ambiguous: “Mm-hmm.” Then she burst into tears, saying, “I’m scared.”
Taking that as an invitation, Weaver entered the apartment and began poking around. She inspected the living room and the kitchen, opening the pantry, the refrigerator, and the freezer. Her search found no evidence that Jade was in any danger. She and Brunner nevertheless removed Jade from her home, grilled her, prevented her from communicating with her parents, and took her to Abell Junior High School. Jade was detained until that afternoon, when the cops finally let her go after Texas Child Protective Services (CPS) concluded there was no evidence of abuse or neglect.
That bizarre episode, Jade’s parents argued in a federal civil rights lawsuit they filed in October 2020, violated the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches and seizures. Megan and Adam McMurry also cited the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of due process, which they said the officers had violated by snatching Jade without notifying her parents or giving them an opportunity to contest that intervention. But Weaver argued that she could not reasonably have been expected to know her actions were unconstitutional—a claim that an appeals court panel unanimously rejected last Friday.
That ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit is the latest development in a case that began after Megan McMurry, who was then employed as a special education teacher at Abell Junior High School, left on a five-day trip to Kuwait. Her husband had been deployed to Kuwait with the National Guard, and she was looking into a potential job that would have allowed the family to relocate there. Weaver, who worked at Abell, knew about the trip because McMurry had emailed all of the school’s employees about it.
McMurry’s colleagues also knew she had asked a neighbor, Vanessa Vallejos, to keep an eye on Jade and her younger brother, Connor, during the trip. Vallejos and her husband knew Jade well because she would often babysit their 6-year-old son. McMurry had also arranged for co-workers to transport Connor, a student at Abell, to and from school. But on October 26, 2018, Abell’s guidance counselor, who had agreed to bring Connor to school, was unable to do so because she was sick. So she texted Weaver, who lived in the neighborhood, asking if she could give Connor a ride. Although another Abell employee ended up bringing Connor to school, Weaver’s involvement did not end there.
Weaver somehow got it into her head that Jade had been “abandoned” and was in urgent need of a “welfare check.” Brunner, her supervisor, agreed, which is how they both ended up at the McMurrys’ apartment that morning. Although Jade reiterated that Vallejos was checking in on her and Connor, offering to put the officers in touch with her, they were unfazed. They had already filed a CPS complaint, and they were determined to act on their unfounded suspicions.
Brunner and Weaver were so sure of themselves, in fact, that they pursued criminal charges against McMurry even after CPS decided there was no case to be made. In January 2020, a jury, after deliberating for five minutes, acquitted McMurry of abandoning or endangering her children.
That prompt acquittal suggested the jurors did not think Weaver and Brunner’s a
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