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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

#151

Post by austincheney »

DocTomoe wrote: post #131
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 c…

Instead of creating yet another special case for government officials, the solution for the US problem is to go and take some ideas from Europe. In Germany, all costs associated with a lawsuit have to be paid/reimbursed by the losing party. This quickly solves the "I know I won't win, but lets ruin the other guy" problem.

That is already how it works in US civil litigation.

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

#152

Post by Broken_Hippo »

nindalf wrote: post #143
DocTomoe wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of creating yet another special case for government officials, the solution for the US problem is to go and take some ideas from Europe. In Germany, all costs associated with a lawsuit have to be paid/reimbursed by the losing party. This quickly solves the "I know I won't win, but lets ruin the other guy" problem.

This rule change makes it potentially very expensive to sue large corporations. They are already more likely to win because they can afford larger, better resourced legal teams. Now the little guy also needs to pay for that legal team when they lose? You might see most people opting not to sue Comcast, McDonalds, Amazon to avoid being financially ruined. It’s probably just best to leave it to the discretion of the co…

It is already difficult to sue large corporations in general: In other words, there is no change. People already decide not to sue many companies so they aren't financially ruined.

Obviously, the discretion of the courts hasn't been consistent nor has it always been fair. Hence, rules.

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

#153

Post by re-actor »

kortilla wrote: post #78
barnaclejive wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop name-dropping "Game theory" into everything. Life is more complex.

More complex for individual actions, but quite good at predicting behavior on average.

You can't predict something you can't explain by just pretending there's something to average. Game theory has it's uses, but this is just absurd.

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

#154

Post by austincheney »

klmadfejno wrote: post #149
lawnchair_larry wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Qualified immunity does not allow assault or murder.

Well it does protect your from civil penalties for law and murder

Not in the case of criminal law violations. Civil suits should not be used as a blunt weapon to end run criminal complaints only because they set the bar lower. This is antithetical to tort reform.

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

#155

Post by Broken_Hippo »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #144
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not including the reasons why qualified immunity is bad though, is this a "devil's advocate" post? I mean the examples you mentioned would get thrown out by a judge because the examples cited are people doing their jobs. They're getting rid of qualified immunity because the police is abusing their power to assault and murder people. I'm not even going to soften that one by saying 'some' police, because inactio…

Qualified immunity does not allow assault or murder.

It allows for harassment, though, and for folks to arrest people willy-nilly. And as the other person said, you are never really responsible for the assault or murder like you would be if you were a private person.

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

#156

Post by hellbannedguy »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #146
thaumasiotes wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be fine if it were possible to criminally prosecute the cops. But it isn't; only the government can do that, and they don't want to.

They are doing it right now.

This is an extremely rare event.

In this case their was abundant video.

Usually no one is around when cops are being bad, and their cop cams are always flipped off?

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

#157

Post by ookdatnog »

coolspot wrote: post #17

I think that the Game theory suggests that cops will be less inclined to show up to a call or do anything to fight crime, because it could bring too much legal responsibility. Eat donuts, ignore the radio and you will be fine.

Game theory is an abstract mathematical model. Citing mathematical models is not science: science requires experiment to verify whether your model holds up in practice.

In this case, one could gather data from different countries to see if there's any correlation between the effectiveness of police and their level of legal protection.

AFAIK, police forces in other rich nations function just fine without qualified immunity (admittedly, I have not studied this in detail).

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

#158

Post by Broken_Hippo »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #146
thaumasiotes wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be fine if it were possible to criminally prosecute the cops. But it isn't; only the government can do that, and they don't want to.

They are doing it right now.

I don't know. There is a long history of cops being "prosecuted" in court theater and being found not guilty. This is generally only in high-profile cases. It is still fairly common to simply suspend an officer or "fire" them, allowing them to get a job in another department. So common that when we investigate folks in the high-profile cases, a history of misconduct isn't a surprise.

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

#159

Post by austincheney »

ookdatnog wrote: post #157
coolspot wrote: post #17

I think that the Game theory suggests that cops will be less inclined to show up to a call or do anything to fight crime, because it could bring too much legal responsibility. Eat donuts, ignore the radio and you will be fine.

Game theory is an abstract mathematical model. Citing mathematical models is not science: science requires experiment to verify whether your model holds up in practice. In this case, one could gather data from different countries to see if there's any correlation between the effectiveness of police and their level of legal protection. AFAIK, police forces in other rich nations function just fine without qualified imm…

Are police in other countries without qualified immunity more or less likely to be sued? Your argument ignores the rather important consideration of civil litigation frequency, which is a question of torts not policing.

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

#160

Post by austincheney »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #155
lawnchair_larry wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Qualified immunity does not allow assault or murder.

It allows for harassment, though, and for folks to arrest people willy-nilly. And as the other person said, you are never really responsible for the assault or murder like you would be if you were a private person.

Qualified immunity does not shield police from wrongful detention or arrest. An arrest must be valid according to a given charge and evidence even if those do not survive to trial.
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