For anyone stumbling across this comment: qualified immunity isn’t a bad thing. It shields all sorts of public employees from civil liability only while doing their jobs. It does not shield them from criminal liability and the civil liability is transferred to their agency.
This means that if a mail carrier opens your mail box to deliver your mail and the lid falls off in their hand, you have to use USPS for damages, not the mail carrier as an individual. You still get compensated for damages, but the government employee can do their job without getting personally bankrupted. If they genuinely did something wrong (as in breaking procedures, not breaking the law) they’ll get disciplined or even fired.
Because cops get qualified immunity and it has the word “immunity” in it everyone with a beef against police ignored the word “qualified” and started screaming that it was evil and means government employees can get away with felonies. That’s not true. If the aforementioned mail carrier rocks up, decides you suck, and hits your mailbox with a baseball bat, then threatens to beat you to a pulp they’re going to face criminal charges. Qualified immunity simply does not apply for crimes committed regardless of if they were done on the clock or in uniform.
Before a bunch of brain-dead people off their meds start bringing up specific cases where cops weren’t charged for specific actions that were either possibly or outright illegal please look at those cases for issues with the prosecutors handling them. They are always because a grand jury failed to indict, not because of qualified immunity.
Either way, QI is illegal by the law of the land as passed, not as improperly copied in 1874. I’m not discussing it’s merits. The law of the land is being broken, and either needs to be rewritten by Congress, or followed.
Harlow v Fitzgerald should have been ruled the other way.
There are a couple of big, huge caveats to that particular case. They’re stated explicitly in the last two paragraphs of the article you linked:
The case is being appealed to the Supreme Court. I’m not sure of the current status, but as of the time that article was written things hadn’t been settled.
While the money offered by the city was undeniably too little, the guy also chose to knock down the house and rebuild a bigger, nicer house than he had. A civil claimant is trying to get back what they lost, they can’t expect to get a leg up.
I used NPR as the reference as an acceptably neutral reporting agency, but they didn’t go back and update the article. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case. https://ij.org/case/lech-v-city-of-greenwood/
This isn’t a caveat. The city wasn’t ever going to rebuild the house for him. Any compensation was always going to be monetary. The fact that he spent more money than he would have gotten isn’t relevant. If someone crashes into and totals your car your replacement car isn’t expected to be equally as old and used as the one you lost. You’re awarded money and can purchase a replacement at your discretion.
The fact that he spent more money is extremely relevant because that’s what he was seeking. It would have been totally reasonable for him to pay for home repairs on the existing foundation and structure.
While the $5,000 the city gave him certainly wouldn’t accomplish that, he took it too far. He destroyed all remaining value left in the structure, built a new (and more expensive) house on his land, and expects the public to pay for that upgrade. He had a right to compensation for repairs, not to have the taxpayer fund the construction of his dream home.
please look at those cases for issues with the prosecutors handling them. They are always because a grand jury failed to indict, not because of qualified immunity.
And this is how I know you have either fallen for the propaganda or you’re arguing in bad faith. A grand jury would indict a ham sandwich for murder if the prosecutor wanted them to do so. The prosecutor has full control over what evidence the grand jury does or does not see. And there is no defense attorney present to argue against indictment. The prosecutor can intentionally exclude exculpatory evidence, include hearsay (and other types of evidence that would be excluded from a trial,) etc… Lastly, the threshold for indictment is laughably low, because it’s basically just the jurors going “yeah it looks like there’s enough evidence to bother with a trial.
To be clear, the grand jury is just an arm of the prosecutor. The district attorney can decide to prosecute even without a grand jury indictment, but that isn’t always politically advantageous. Since district attorneys are typically elected officials, they need to worry about the optics of whether or not they charge someone, while also trying to maintain a positive working relationship with the courts and police.
Let’s say the public wants to see a trial after a cop kills someone. The DA doesn’t want to prosecute them, because the police union has vowed to stop cooperating with investigations if the cop is prosecuted. But the public wants to see a trial, and it’s an election year for the DA. They’ll fall back to the grand jury as an excuse. They’ll go to the grand jury and bring no evidence, (because again, they have full control over what evidence the jury is allowed to see).
When the grand jury fails to indict because they were given no evidence to indict with, the DA can then jump in front of the news cameras and go “oh woe is me, I tried SO hard to prosecute them but the mean and nasty grand jury refused to indict! My hands are tied! But I really did try to prosecute, so remember to vote for me!”
And the inverse is also true: Maybe a big case is in the news and the DA needs to look strong. Maybe a pretty white girl went missing and was found dead after a big public search. They can literally frame someone for the crime, and since the DA has full control over the evidence, the grand jury will happily indict them even if they’re clearly innocent. Maybe the DA has DNA evidence proving that the person wasn’t who rapemurdered the girl. But the DA doesn’t care if they’re actually innocent, because that’s what the trial is for; They just need a trial to look like they’re working on solving the case.
Ok, you misunderstood me and flew right off the handle. I said “look for issues with the prosecutors”. I’m laying the blame on prosecutors for not getting a case past a grand jury.
According to the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871? Yep.
The 1871 Congress really tried to fix things only to have at least one other law illegally changed, which caused Qualified Immunity.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/15/us/politics/qualified-immunity-supreme-court.html
For anyone stumbling across this comment: qualified immunity isn’t a bad thing. It shields all sorts of public employees from civil liability only while doing their jobs. It does not shield them from criminal liability and the civil liability is transferred to their agency.
This means that if a mail carrier opens your mail box to deliver your mail and the lid falls off in their hand, you have to use USPS for damages, not the mail carrier as an individual. You still get compensated for damages, but the government employee can do their job without getting personally bankrupted. If they genuinely did something wrong (as in breaking procedures, not breaking the law) they’ll get disciplined or even fired.
Because cops get qualified immunity and it has the word “immunity” in it everyone with a beef against police ignored the word “qualified” and started screaming that it was evil and means government employees can get away with felonies. That’s not true. If the aforementioned mail carrier rocks up, decides you suck, and hits your mailbox with a baseball bat, then threatens to beat you to a pulp they’re going to face criminal charges. Qualified immunity simply does not apply for crimes committed regardless of if they were done on the clock or in uniform.
Before a bunch of brain-dead people off their meds start bringing up specific cases where cops weren’t charged for specific actions that were either possibly or outright illegal please look at those cases for issues with the prosecutors handling them. They are always because a grand jury failed to indict, not because of qualified immunity.
Either way, QI is illegal by the law of the land as passed, not as improperly copied in 1874. I’m not discussing it’s merits. The law of the land is being broken, and either needs to be rewritten by Congress, or followed.
Harlow v Fitzgerald should have been ruled the other way.
Aaand here we go again…
If the lid falls off your mailbox you have no claim against the USPS. Nor do you have any claim against the police if they, say, destroy your house.
https://www.npr.org/2019/10/30/774788611/police-owe-nothing-to-man-whose-home-they-blew-up-appeals-court-says
There are a couple of big, huge caveats to that particular case. They’re stated explicitly in the last two paragraphs of the article you linked:
The case is being appealed to the Supreme Court. I’m not sure of the current status, but as of the time that article was written things hadn’t been settled.
While the money offered by the city was undeniably too little, the guy also chose to knock down the house and rebuild a bigger, nicer house than he had. A civil claimant is trying to get back what they lost, they can’t expect to get a leg up.
I used NPR as the reference as an acceptably neutral reporting agency, but they didn’t go back and update the article. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case. https://ij.org/case/lech-v-city-of-greenwood/
This isn’t a caveat. The city wasn’t ever going to rebuild the house for him. Any compensation was always going to be monetary. The fact that he spent more money than he would have gotten isn’t relevant. If someone crashes into and totals your car your replacement car isn’t expected to be equally as old and used as the one you lost. You’re awarded money and can purchase a replacement at your discretion.
The fact that he spent more money is extremely relevant because that’s what he was seeking. It would have been totally reasonable for him to pay for home repairs on the existing foundation and structure.
While the $5,000 the city gave him certainly wouldn’t accomplish that, he took it too far. He destroyed all remaining value left in the structure, built a new (and more expensive) house on his land, and expects the public to pay for that upgrade. He had a right to compensation for repairs, not to have the taxpayer fund the construction of his dream home.
And this is how I know you have either fallen for the propaganda or you’re arguing in bad faith. A grand jury would indict a ham sandwich for murder if the prosecutor wanted them to do so. The prosecutor has full control over what evidence the grand jury does or does not see. And there is no defense attorney present to argue against indictment. The prosecutor can intentionally exclude exculpatory evidence, include hearsay (and other types of evidence that would be excluded from a trial,) etc… Lastly, the threshold for indictment is laughably low, because it’s basically just the jurors going “yeah it looks like there’s enough evidence to bother with a trial.
To be clear, the grand jury is just an arm of the prosecutor. The district attorney can decide to prosecute even without a grand jury indictment, but that isn’t always politically advantageous. Since district attorneys are typically elected officials, they need to worry about the optics of whether or not they charge someone, while also trying to maintain a positive working relationship with the courts and police.
Let’s say the public wants to see a trial after a cop kills someone. The DA doesn’t want to prosecute them, because the police union has vowed to stop cooperating with investigations if the cop is prosecuted. But the public wants to see a trial, and it’s an election year for the DA. They’ll fall back to the grand jury as an excuse. They’ll go to the grand jury and bring no evidence, (because again, they have full control over what evidence the jury is allowed to see).
When the grand jury fails to indict because they were given no evidence to indict with, the DA can then jump in front of the news cameras and go “oh woe is me, I tried SO hard to prosecute them but the mean and nasty grand jury refused to indict! My hands are tied! But I really did try to prosecute, so remember to vote for me!”
And the inverse is also true: Maybe a big case is in the news and the DA needs to look strong. Maybe a pretty white girl went missing and was found dead after a big public search. They can literally frame someone for the crime, and since the DA has full control over the evidence, the grand jury will happily indict them even if they’re clearly innocent. Maybe the DA has DNA evidence proving that the person wasn’t who rapemurdered the girl. But the DA doesn’t care if they’re actually innocent, because that’s what the trial is for; They just need a trial to look like they’re working on solving the case.
Ok, you misunderstood me and flew right off the handle. I said “look for issues with the prosecutors”. I’m laying the blame on prosecutors for not getting a case past a grand jury.
You just bit my head off to agree with me.