Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

fire.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 543 posts

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

#191

Post by teeray »

ryandrake wrote: post #81
elicash wrote: post #71

I’ll cut against the grain here and say it’s ABSOLUTELY appropriate for taxpayers to pay the bill here. It’s pretty toxic that people don’t want to take responsibility for their own government in a democracy. In this case, it’s especially bad, given the sheriff is elected by the people directly. But I’d go even further and say even where control is less direct, we need incentives for voters to take this stuff serious…

Taxpayers should get a line item on their tax bills that specifically counts the amount of their bill that went toward settlements arising out of police misconduct, so they can see in numeric terms what they're voting for.

> what they're voting for.

If citizens had granular voting power (i.e. liquid democracy), this would make more sense. As it stands you get to vote for team red or team blue once in a while and hope that their votes impact that line item you’re concerned about.

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

#192

Post by embedding-shape »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #187
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm only against the death penalty for the simple fact that courts have convicted innocent people. Sometimes, that conviction happens when the court actively blocks exonerating evidence. https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/410/284/ https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/547/319/

Anybody who is wrongfully executed was basically guaranteed to spend their entire life in prison. Death row inmates get dramatically more access to legal aid than anybody else rotting in a cell, so if they couldn't win their appeal, the guy doing life isn't, either. Generally, I'm against incarceration for that reason. I think the relatively muted violence of it is too easy to stomach for the public, which leads to p…

> "did this act constitute a crime, and if so, what is the punishment?"

I guess that last part is the perspective I'd change, for a more compassionate world. I'd much rather ask "did this act constitute a crime, and if so, what made the person commit that crime, and how can we help them not do that in the future again?".

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

#193

Post by boredumb »

embedding-shape wrote: post #89
lokar wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The death penalty should be reserved for people who violate a position of public trust and authority.

Hot take, but I feel like no humans should be killed as a punishment... But I'm also probably too European to understand the true value of death penalty.

If someone kills a family member and the court gives them 6 years and a parole officer, the remaining family will and has taken justice into their own hands and that has a much higher blast radius and margin of error than executing a guy convicted of the murder in a court of law and sat on death row making appeals for 10-15 years.

If dylan roof was allowed to live his full natural life in jail, there would be race riots in the US by the end of the press conference.

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

#194

Post by etskinner »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #88
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.

The Sheriff absolutely should face some consequences, at least to his career. The money paid to Bushart ultimately is no skin off the government's back. It's taxpayer money, they will just underfund a good thing, raise taxes, or print debt to pay it if there's a shortfall. It'd be an interesting thing to see garnishing of wages, deductions from pension funds, or loss of some kind of bonus system to help balance the s…

Seems to me that law enforcement officers should be required to carry liability insurance that they personally pay for. Have a lot of settlements / claims? Your insurance rate goes up. That happens enough and now it's not economically feasible to hold the job

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

#195

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

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.

What could a systemic solution to this possibly look like? He didn't stay in jail for 37 days because the system left no room for any other possible outcome. There were a number of points at which he could have been released had the system worked correctly. But Sheriff Nick Weems, an official in a key position of authority administrating the local justice system, decided that he'd like to subvert the system and steal this man's freedom. So he used his authority and expertise to ensure the system did not work correctly.

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

#196

Post by ikeboy »

ceejayoz wrote: post #172
ikeboy wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't said those things. Rape and murder are existing crimes, and they should be applied equally to police officers. I think that the core problem with the system is not individual bad actors, but overcriminalization and the acceptance of that by judges and juries. To solve that you need actual reform, and adding a new crime that would inevitably be weaponized is not the way. The whole concept of holding people "…

> Rape and murder are existing crimes, and they should be applied equally to police officers. How about kidnapping and false imprisonment, as in this case?

As I mentioned elsewhere, neither currently apply because due process of law was followed.

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

#197

Post by joe_mamba »

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.

>In most European legal systems a law enforcement officer overstepping his legal authority would face criminal charges for it.

No they won't face anything like that. Police lawyers will claim they were just enforcing hate speech laws to protect the country's leadership from far right supremacists and will be let go scuff free. You also won't get anything remotely close to $835,000 from the state for being falsely imprisoned. You're lucky to get maybe 5000 Euros for your trouble.

In Germany for instance the politicians are protected by dedicated law against negative comments from the public. You can't even call them fat or they send the police after you. Sure, you won't get locked up for the fat comment, but the point of the police going after people with mean comments is only intimidation, to get people to self censor and stop criticizing the leadership and accept the propaganda like obedient cattle.

Americans with their 1st, 2nd and Nth amendments, have an overly rosy view of the EU justice system which is far more lenient to law enforcement abuse of power and speech crackdowns. It's why you easily saw Americans attacking and throwing rocks at masked ICE officers in the US, and why Germans would never dare touch a law enforcement officer in their country, because the courts would never tolerate public attack on law enforcement and challenging the state authority.

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

#198

Post by joe_mamba »

etskinner wrote: post #194
maerF0x0 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Sheriff absolutely should face some consequences, at least to his career. The money paid to Bushart ultimately is no skin off the government's back. It's taxpayer money, they will just underfund a good thing, raise taxes, or print debt to pay it if there's a shortfall. It'd be an interesting thing to see garnishing of wages, deductions from pension funds, or loss of some kind of bonus system to help balance the s…

Seems to me that law enforcement officers should be required to carry liability insurance that they personally pay for. Have a lot of settlements / claims? Your insurance rate goes up. That happens enough and now it's not economically feasible to hold the job

Not just law enforcement, all civil servants should.

I had to spend money to sue the local unemployment office because a bureaucrat there illegally cut off my unemployment payments. They lost and had to pay me back in arrears but that money came from the taxpayers(so me and you) and that asshole who did that is still working there just fine collection golden handcuff paychecks and a gold plated pension when she retires.

All civil servants need a form of direct accountability with consequences for their mistakes at work, especially when malicious and repeated. Currently they're untouchable and the taxpayer foots the bill for their mistakes with no repercussion.

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

#199

Post by IAmBroom »

Just a note to the many commentors hear gnashing their teeth that "the sheriff should have to pay, not the taxpayers!"... The article makes it pretty clear that the settlement was against the sheriff and others involved.

Digging further[0]: "Morrow and Weems have been sued in their personal capacities and could “be on the hook for monetary damages,” a press release from Bushart’s legal team at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) said. Perry County, Tennessee, is also a defendant since it’s liable for unconstitutional acts of its sheriffs."

So, it sounds like most of the burden is placed directly on the shoulders of the guilty "officers of the law".

0: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/man-sues-cops-wh...

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

#200

Post by ikeboy »

mindslight wrote: post #175
ikeboy wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that an example? Whatever you do now doesn't work retroactively. Changing the system means removing the potential for abuse of power, not punishing abuse of power after the fact.

> Changing the system means removing the potential for abuse of power, not punishing abuse of power after the fact. At a certain point, punishing abuse of power after the fact is the only way to discourage the potential abuse of power. Like there is nothing that actually stops you or me from going and kidnapping someone. And that same dynamic applies to someone who happens to also be a sheriff who controls a jail due…

The warrant here was approved by a magistrate judge, and I would suggest making the process for approval more robust to reduce this kind of abuse.

Personal civil liability and firing can also help.

Post reply on HN