Wednesday, June 09, 2021

Qualified immunity needs to either be greatly restricted

or gotten rid of.  I'm sick of reading about cases like this.
As Norris alleged in a complaint, Capt. Cody “did not check to make sure Henry SRT members were going to the correct address or otherwise perform adequate precautionary measures to ensure the search warrant was properly executed.” Although the captain did review the search warrant, he admitted he didn’t read it “all the way through,” and that he usually doesn't review the property's description prior to a raid.

For instance, the no-knock warrant described the suspect living at 305 English Road, which had “off white siding” and “a black roof.” In contrast, Norris’ home at 303 English Road (which he had owned for more than half a century) is yellow with a grey roof. Yet despite those clear differences, footage from eight separate body cameras showed the officers all walking past the correct house and heading towards Norris’ home.

Even when officers began raiding Norris’ home, Capt. Cody later testified he “wasn’t sure” this second house was actually their target and just assumed his subordinates “acquired information that justifiably led them to proceed to the second structure.” Those actions, Norris argued, “were not consistent with a reasonable effort to ascertain and identify the place intended to be searched.”

But last month, his civil rights lawsuit was blocked when the Eleventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that the captain was entitled to qualified immunity. Citing a 2019 ruling where the Eleventh Circuit upheld qualified immunity to a deputy who accidentally shot a 10-year-old while aiming for the family’s dog, the court noted that qualified immunity protects “all but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law.”


I will refrain from further comment as there are breakables in reach.

4 comments:

ruralcounsel said...

Absolutely the courts need to raise the bar for claiming qualified immunity. Same way they need to clamp down on civil asset forfeitures. I doubt it will happen spontaneously. Government authority is too much of a country club mentality.

JC said...

The Law is so complex that law enforcement officials cannot be expected to understand it. Citizens, on the other hand, are expected to be fully conversant in all the law and all its permutations. Yeah no.

Anonymous said...

It is being reigned in, but not nearly fast enough. techdirt.com has written quite a few articles about this topic.

smudge said...

It's not complex. Shall not be infringed. Get over it.