zlacker

>>mnm1+(OP)
I'm curious - it's obvious what abuses of qualified immunity are driving this, but the law must have been originally put in place for a reason. Are there any examples where a police officer was shielded from prosecution for something that, if you or I did it would definitely be a crime, but that a reasonable person would say, "yes, this is a good application of qualified immunity"?

>>comman+9m
The idea behind qualified immunity is to protect government employees from nuisance suits over discretionary actions performed in their official capacity, excepting actions that violated local laws or civil rights. (Basically, it lets a human government employee make reasonable mistakes.)

The original laws of this country did not permit lawsuits against government employees acting in an official capacity. After the Civil War, the Civil Right Act of 1871 was passed allowing citizens and residents to sue government officials for civil rights violations suffered under color of law. The qualified immunity doctrine was created by the courts after that to shield public officials from nuisance suits for discretionary actions (generally meaning bureaucratic actions) by people angry over actions that went against them (i.e., for denials of licenses, judgments, etc.).

Unfortunately, due to the volume of nuisance suits, this doctrine got stronger and stronger over time. At some point, the courts began applying this strengthened doctrine intended for bureaucratic actions to police actions.

>>gamblo+qp
The idea that law enforcement and government officials should be treated less strictly under the law is, to me, completely preposterous. If anything, they should explicitly not be given the benefit of the doubt and should be treated much more strictly under the law.

I realize that a huge number of people completely disagree with that, and I don't really know how to persuade any of them other than to urge them to examine history and note the consequences of authoritarianism.

>>baddox+9w
So the planning commission denies a permit for an addition to your house, diminishing its value. Or grants a permit to your neighbor, to the same effect.

One approach would be to have the judge say, "actually that addition looks fine to me, the commissioners shall pay you the corresponding value out of their kids' college funds."

Another would be, "I'm not the planning commission, that's their decision to make, unless they've acted outside the bounds of their charter, tough shit."

Qualified immunity is essentially the latter.

>>closep+CD
Except in that example the planning committee did something that wasn't otherwise illegal. Unless your case is showing that they're picking favorites or something.

>>nerdpo+cE
No, that example is precisely on point.

Qualified immunity applies precisely because they didn't do anything illegal (based on the limited facts of the hypo). If they did something illegal, then qualified immunity would not apply.

>>gamblo+jG
This utterly tautological, which part of the problem with QI. QI applies precisely when there's no precedent that explicitly declares an action to be illegal (c.f the case of cops that used pepper spray, which was deemed sufficiently different from tasing that the rules established for tasing did not apply, there was therefore no precedent for the precise case of unnecessarily pepper spraying a person and thus QI applied.

QI completely sidesteps the question "is it illegal" by replacing it with "has a suitable court ever established a precedent of suitable specificity saying that this is illegal when carried out by a government official/employee"?

Which is likely how Gauvin will walk, since despite killing person being illegal, there are no suitable court precedents ruling with sufficient specificity that a government agent killing a person is illegal.

>>PaulDa+at1
No, it's not tautological.

QI applies if the government employee shows they acted reasonably in exercising discretion in performing their job. It doesn't matter whether or not there's no precedent.

Cases saying where QI applies, like the pepper spray case, exist because nobody knew beforehand if it applied to the use of pepper spray. And if you read the case, it was the policy of that police force to use pepper spray. Thus, the question boiled down to whether it was reasonable the officer to use pepper spray in that situation. The police force is the proper defendant in that case, not the individual officer.

Which is likely how Gauvin will walk, since despite killing person being illegal, there are no suitable court precedents ruling with sufficient specificity that a government agent killing a person is illegal

That's both ridiculous, wrong, and clearly FUD. Within the past year several cops have been found guilty of murder or homicide for the illegal use of force resulting in the death of someone. It's very likely that Gauvin will plead guilty to avoid a trial and secure a reduced sentence, because if he risks a trial he would be sentenced to life in prison if he's found guilty. (To walk, he'd need to convince 12 people that he isn't guilty; a hung jury would just result in a re-trial.)