Tennessee man jailed 37 days for Trump meme wins settlement after lawsuit

Post by ceejayoz » Wed, May 20, 2026, 3:38 PM UTC

chociej wrote: post #34

arein3 wrote: post #19

Thank god 1st amendment works. But it should not get paid from taxpayer money, instea the offending officer ahould pay it

I at least partly disagree, speaking from my perspective as a small-time city council member. I agree that ideally taxpayers shouldn't pay money for this kind of misconduct. But in practice, misconduct must face consequences, those affected must be made whole, the offending employee likely can't pay the judgment in full, and most importantly, the monetary judgment is the most effective way to motivate city government…

Post by idle_zealot » Wed, May 20, 2026, 3:39 PM UTC

vitally3643 wrote: post #38

contubernio wrote: post #28

The sheriff that arrested him should face criminal charges for misuse of authority. That he doesn't reflects a structural weakness in US law. In most European legal systems a law enforcement officer overstepping his legal authority would face criminal charges for it.

It's not a structural weakness, it's an intentional feature . Our legislature specifically and intentionally made it impossible for citizens (or anyone) to hold police responsible for anything.

Post by p0w3n3d » Wed, May 20, 2026, 3:40 PM UTC

contubernio wrote: post #28

The sheriff that arrested him should face criminal charges for misuse of authority. That he doesn't reflects a structural weakness in US law. In most European legal systems a law enforcement officer overstepping his legal authority would face criminal charges for it.

Post by ceejayoz » Wed, May 20, 2026, 3:41 PM UTC

ikeboy wrote: post #44

ceejayoz wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whatever you do now doesn't work retroactively. The point of such a thing is to deter similar conduct in the future. The fact that this isn't a crime, and that qualified immunity typically means they can't even be held responsible civily, is part of what encourages police to commit misconduct like this. The only folks punished here were the local taxpayers footing the bill.

If you're going to change the system, which you need to do to make it possible to bring charges in a case like this, the other changes I suggested would be more effective and harder to weaponize. The core problem here is that the system allowed an innocent person to stay in jail. That needs to be fixed on a system level, not by trying to punish people after the fact for bad outcomes.

Post by ikeboy » Wed, May 20, 2026, 3:41 PM UTC

BoggleOhYeah wrote: post #15

ikeboy wrote: post #9

The path to solving a culture that overincarcerates is not by incarcerating those involved in perpetuating that culture. We need to tame the impulse to throw people in jail for doing things we dislike, not just point it at different targets. I see several comments saying that criminal charges should be brought over this. That is not the way.

Sure. Let’s start pushing back against over-incarceration by not punishing people that knowingly did something wrong and flies in the face of the country’s supposed values. Makes sense.