Live data from Hacker News

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

fire.org

271–280 of 543 posts

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

#271

The fact that taxpayers and not the police themselves have to pay the settlement is the worst part of this. Every settlement against the police should be taken from their pension fund. This is something I've been advocating for decades now, because it creates an incentive not to do things like this. Right now, good cops don't patrol bad cops because it won't affect them. By aligning the incentives right, it will mean…

That's a lot of liability for police. They would likely buy insurance against it.

For which they'd pay with taxpayer's money anyway

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

#272
post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does that have to do with the elements of false imprisonment?

"invoking the jurisdiction of a court to review the unlawful detention or imprisonment of an individual" would seem to indicate that such a detention can be deemed unlawful, yes?

In short, unlawful means different things in different contexts.

In the context of false imprisonment, it generally means without legal process, and legal process later overturned does not count.

See eg. https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-supreme-court/549/384.h...

>Reflective of the fact that false imprisonment consists of detention without legal process, a false imprisonment ends once the victim becomes held pursuant to such process--when, for example, he is bound over by a magistrate or arraigned on charges. Dobbs, supra, §39, at 74, n. 2; Keeton, supra, §119, at 888; H. Stephen, Actions for Malicious Prosecution 120-123 (1888). Thereafter, unlawful detention forms part of the damages for the "entirely distinct" tort of malicious prosecution, which remedies detention accompanied, not by absence of legal process, but by wrongful institution of legal process

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

#273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ri…

Cool, maybe rather than aiming to punish people, aim to rehabilitate them, and they don't need to spend their full natural life in jail. And if they're "unsalvageable" like many would claim, we (maybe not you, in the US, I dunno) have hospitals for those that are ill.

Cool, but I'm not sure the victims and the public are always thrilled when they see murderers get off by reason of insanity, despite it being a life sentence and essentially a medically induced solitary mental confinement. People were furious about Yates and Bobbitt despite not even living within a 1000 mile radius because they felt it was a miscarriage of justice and are aware that rehabilitating people who drowned their own children is naive at best or yet another grift to siphon public money into their own pet projects and feign moral superiority.

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

#274
post #98
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a sane, fair, and (crucially) long-term stable system, persons given privilege and authority over others are subject to a higher standard for their own behavior. The long-running US trend of the inverse (additional legal protections for positions of authority) is incredibly destructive. This is a moral and values judgment, yes, but it's not just that -- it communicates to the population at large that they should f…

> In a sane, fair, and (crucially) long-term stable system, persons given privilege and authority over others are subject to a higher standard for their own behavior. The US military is subject to a higher standard, the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Penalties for US service members breaking the law or codes of conduct are much higher and much more severe than civilians. The US military makes routine example of la…

I agree with most of that, but are cops around you paid low enough to get anything in exchange for giving higher wages? Ive lived in many poor places across the US and the cops are often among the highest paid workers in the area already despite currently needing a jokes worth of training and knowledge. The wages ive seen cops around me getting seemed to already be in the top 50% of skilled proffessionals with college degrees.

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

#275
post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a lot of liability for police. They would likely buy insurance against it.

For which they'd pay with taxpayer's money anyway

Right - but you are not considering that it's possible for a police department to be so bad as to be uninsurable. Even if the police continue to do misconduct, bad departments would get into situations where no insurer will cover them, and they are forced to make changes. It's not a perfect fix at all, but it would be a nice end-around for qualified immunity.

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

#276
post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who cares? Well the grand parent post references Europe, it is presumably a response to that.

The UK is famously no longer a part of the EU.

EU membership has nothing to do with being physically located in Europe.

The UK, Switzerland, and most of the former Yugoslavian states are not in the EU. Same for Iceland.

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

#277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the worst examples in the US is the consequence asymmetry for speech. Law enforcement and federal agents can lie as much as they like with impunity when dealing with citizens, but (a) it's a federal crime to lie to a federal officer (18 US Code § 1001, up to 8 years imprisonment), and (b) truly, anything you say to law enforcement when under any suspicion can and will be used against you in a court of law, eve…

This distinction doesn't make sense. A police officer's job is to lie to you. Are we expecting jailtime for doing their job?

How is it their job to lie to me?

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

#278

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 the UK 30 people are arrested a day for social media posts online. Only about 10 percent resulting in convictions. Police don't face criminal charges for this. https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/police-make-30-arr...

[deleted]

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

#279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK 30 people are arrested a day for social media posts online. Only about 10 percent resulting in convictions. Police don't face criminal charges for this. https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/police-make-30-arr...

[flagged]

That's completely wrong. The US legal system drew heavily from the British system, particularly any of the common law pieces (much of tort law, IIRC).

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

#280
post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think magistrates rule on questions of law (maybe you were implying this, but maybe not). But in general the whole legal/justice system is basically blind to the harm it itself causes, so I don't think an actual judge looking at the merits of a warrant would be terribly adversarial to a sheriff either - they work together all the time, and most of the warrants presented by the sheriff are legitimate. I do agr…

Magistrates are supposed to verify that the warrant contains probable cause and reject ones that don't. You could make the system more adversarial at that point, although I think enforcing bail hearings where a public defender can argue would help in this and many other cases.

Shooting from the hip, I'd think a properly adversarial/just process would be something like a public defender (or other attorney of the person's choosing) who is paid out of government funds. Then there should probably be different classes of warrants, with the lowest class being something like the person is notified and able to choose their representation to challenge the warrant before it's even issued (presumably non-violent, no flight risk, etc), with escalating classes based on those factors.

But even then, abuse of that classification is something that could routinely happen and would need to be punished post-facto. Imagine the same sheriff looking to perform the same retaliation, so he checks all the boxes for a no-notice no-knock warrant that still results in an arrest with a weekend in jail. Which is why my main point is that we shouldn't argue against one avenue of reform with the goal of emphasizing a different one.

Post reply on HN