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New Mexico is the second state to ban qualified immunity

innocenceproject.org

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Re: New Mexico is the second state to ban qualified immunity

#91

Post by inglor_cz »

SavantIdiot wrote: post #5
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #2

I thought that because QI was defended by the SCOTUS, that even if a state doesn't have QI at all, a police officer or department sued for malpractice could still appeal to the SCOTUS and then eventually win?

We'll see. Part of the Catch-22 of QI is that if it hasn't gone to trial it doesn't exist, so it doesn't go to trial. Let's see if this WinAmp's Box can be bashed open.

"WinAmp's Box"

Don't! If you bash it open, llamas will flood the world and whip everybody's ass in retaliation!

Re: New Mexico is the second state to ban qualified immunity

#92

Post by thebradbain »

tjs8rj wrote: post #79
barnaclejive wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"without fear of personal liability" You see no issue with that, seriously?

To be clear: qualified immunity is about civil liability. It doesn’t protect from criminal liability. Qualified immunity isn’t the reason cops don’t go to jail for murder, because it doesn’t apply at all for criminal procedures

However, a civilian cannot normally press criminal charges against a cop, so the distinction is moot in practice.

Re: New Mexico is the second state to ban qualified immunity

#93

Post by torstenvl »

thebradbain wrote: post #81
torstenvl wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn't qualified immunity applies only to police No. > the solution should be to end qualified immunity for police only. There is a difference between health department inspector and police officer, no reason to apply the same standards in both cases. That makes no sense. A government official performing a government job because they are required to by the government should not then be ordered by the government's co…

> because they are required to The government is not requiring cops to send innocent people to jail, kill extrajudicially, or otherwise ruin peoples’ lives simply because they felt like it. In fact, that’s the exact opposite of justice, which is actually their mandate. > There’s no rational distinction between [police officers and health inspectors] One has leeway to kill innocent people outside of the court system b…

> Again, it is antithetical to their job to carry out injustice, and when people mess up their job bad enough, such a killing or framing an innocent person (intentionally or not), there should be consequences.

You can't talk about justice in one breath and vengeance against the fall guy in the next. If a police officer unintentionally kills an innocent person because they were, e.g., ordered to perform an armed no-knock raid in the middle of the night in a state where 42.4% of the population owns firearms, it is the local government -- not the individual police officer -- who killed that innocent person.

Re: New Mexico is the second state to ban qualified immunity

#94

Post by stormbrew »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #75
barnaclejive wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"without fear of personal liability" You see no issue with that, seriously?

> You see no issue with that, seriously? Qualified immunity isn't a get-out-of-jail-free card. It is released, for example, when a government official breaks clearly established law. (Counterfactual: the courts have been very narrow in interpreting what "clearly established" means.)

To expand on just how absurdly narrow courts interpret "clearly established", there's this example from the wikipedia page on qualified immunity[1] for eg.

> Critics have cited examples such as a November 2019 ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, which found that an earlier court case ruling it unconstitutional for police to sic dogs on suspects who have surrendered by lying on the ground did not apply under the "clearly established" rule to a case in which Tennessee police allowed their police dog to bite a surrendered suspect because the suspect had surrendered not by lying down but by sitting on the ground and raising his hands.

The net effect of this appears to basically be that it's impossible to prove literally anything pierces qualified immunity unless it was ruled on prior to the establishment of qualified immunity as a defense. How exactly can you create precedent when you require nearly identical precedent to set it? It's a blatant catch-22. Like, literally something that could have been in the book Catch 22.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity

Re: New Mexico is the second state to ban qualified immunity

#95

Post by AnthonyMouse »

mike_d wrote: post #40

The purpose of qualified immunity is to permit officials to carry out their discretionary duties without fear of personal liability or harassing litigation. It applies to all parts of government. Didn't get the building permit for your kids horse barn? Sue the planning commission members individually. Animal control writes you a citation for Puddles not being on a leash? Unleash the lawyers. Health department gave yo…

> The purpose of qualified immunity is to permit officials to carry out their discretionary duties without fear of personal liability or harassing litigation.

This is a general problem with the US court system. People with more resources can use it to destroy people with fewer resources, because litigation is expensive and time consuming even if you ultimately prevail.

This isn't a problem for the rich because they can survive the loss, and then the incentive to frivolously harass them isn't there when it costs you as much as it does them. It isn't a problem for government officials because of qualified immunity. It's a problem for everybody else.

Maybe we should take the exception away from government officials, to increase their incentive to solve it for everybody else.

Re: New Mexico is the second state to ban qualified immunity

#96

Post by [deleted] »

torstenvl wrote: post #93
thebradbain wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because they are required to The government is not requiring cops to send innocent people to jail, kill extrajudicially, or otherwise ruin peoples’ lives simply because they felt like it. In fact, that’s the exact opposite of justice, which is actually their mandate. > There’s no rational distinction between [police officers and health inspectors] One has leeway to kill innocent people outside of the court system b…

> Again, it is antithetical to their job to carry out injustice, and when people mess up their job bad enough, such a killing or framing an innocent person (intentionally or not), there should be consequences. You can't talk about justice in one breath and vengeance against the fall guy in the next. If a police officer unintentionally kills an innocent person because they were, e.g., ordered to perform an armed no-kn…

[deleted]

Re: New Mexico is the second state to ban qualified immunity

#97

Post by thebradbain »

torstenvl wrote: post #93
thebradbain wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because they are required to The government is not requiring cops to send innocent people to jail, kill extrajudicially, or otherwise ruin peoples’ lives simply because they felt like it. In fact, that’s the exact opposite of justice, which is actually their mandate. > There’s no rational distinction between [police officers and health inspectors] One has leeway to kill innocent people outside of the court system b…

> Again, it is antithetical to their job to carry out injustice, and when people mess up their job bad enough, such a killing or framing an innocent person (intentionally or not), there should be consequences. You can't talk about justice in one breath and vengeance against the fall guy in the next. If a police officer unintentionally kills an innocent person because they were, e.g., ordered to perform an armed no-kn…

That’s not the type of scenario that people have in mind when they’re talking about the systemic failure of qualified immunity — in a functional court system, such a case would shake out naturally (either a non-punishable offense or involuntary manslaughter, depending on context, as after all, an innocent person was killed), while still allowing crimes such as manufacturing evidence or reckless negligence or murder to go punished.

As it is, a citizen cannot normally charge a cop with a crime, so all legal recourse against the police must go through a civil court in practice, where the doctrine of qualified immunity acts as a shield

Re: New Mexico is the second state to ban qualified immunity

#98

Post by [deleted] »

stormbrew wrote: post #94
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You see no issue with that, seriously? Qualified immunity isn't a get-out-of-jail-free card. It is released, for example, when a government official breaks clearly established law. (Counterfactual: the courts have been very narrow in interpreting what "clearly established" means.)

To expand on just how absurdly narrow courts interpret "clearly established", there's this example from the wikipedia page on qualified immunity[1] for eg. > Critics have cited examples such as a November 2019 ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, which found that an earlier court case ruling it unconstitutional for police to sic dogs on suspects who have surrendered by lying on the grou…

[deleted]

Re: New Mexico is the second state to ban qualified immunity

#99

Post by stormbrew »

mike_d wrote: post #90
devwastaken wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Qualified immunity was made up by courts, their legislating from the bench should have no merit, and therefore revoking qualified immunity is the right thing to do under checks and balances. We need a replacement, one written in legislation, that puts fixed narrow limits on how immunity applies. If you break the law - you should receive no protections. There is no excuse for enforcers of law to not know the law. This…

> Qualified immunity was made up by courts That is how our whole system works. The first amendment for example doesn't have an explicit "yelling fire in a movie theatre" exemption, yet the courts have defined tests that determine if speech is protected. > We need a replacement [...] If you break the law - you should receive no protections That is exactly how it works today. Once you have been found guilty in a crimin…

> That is exactly how it works today. Once you have been found guilty in a criminal court, you no longer have any protections against civil cases.

I don't think this is true?

The test is much more narrow than this. You could potentially be convicted of a crime even if you didn't have a reasonable belief that you were doing so, but qualified immunity explicitly dictates that you have to be intending to break the law or that your actions both violate a law and that there is extremely clear precedent that they do so.

That seems, unusually for civil cases, to be a much higher bar than criminal conviction requires.

Re: New Mexico is the second state to ban qualified immunity

#100

Post by Robin_Message »

reportt wrote: post #88
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cops need to hold individual "malpractice" insurance (like doctors) or that settlements need to come out of the union retirement fund The insurance idea is stupid. It will just end up being bought by the union, removing the individual incentive component, and added as a line item the next time pay negotiations come up.

But underwriters don't necessarily need to insure every officer, and not every officer will be insured the same. If they are deemed too risky, it doesn't matter if the union is backing their premiums or not -- if they don't have insurance, they can't work (or can't do fieldwork or something).

The union could adopt an "all or none" policy with the insurance company, and then if an individual officer is barred by the insurer, the union will be telling all officers (and management) "sorry, insurance won't cover us, can't come in to work until it is sorted."
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