Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #AbolishQI
Most recents (12)
Something that deserves far more attention is that the police murders of George Floyd and Tyre Nichols (and many others) took place in front of multiple fellow officers who did nothing to protect the victim. This is like a flight crew doing nothing about a plainly drunk pilot. /1
What it conveys to me, among other things, is a deeply pathological institutional culture in which officers have internalized the notion that they are entitled to act as they see fit in the moment without being second-guessed—and certainly not by anyone who’s not a cop. /2
This is madness. People who are clothed with the extraordinary authority, discretion, and hardware that cops possess must understand that they are agents who must be willing and able to justify every decision they make on the job to the principles who hired and employ them—us. /3
Big day for rights-violating govt officials who desperately want avoid having to explain to civil jurors why they (1) set a man on fire with tasers to prevent him from setting himself on fire; and (2) put an avowedly suicidal, now-deceased man in a cell with an obvious ligature.
The first case with the taser-incineration is Ramirez v. Guardarrama, and the facts are even more horrific than I've described. Dissent from denial of cert by Sotomayor, Kagan, and Breyer. supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf…
The second case with the idiotic jailers who put a suicidal man in a cell with a means to kill himself and then failed to call 911 while watching him strangle to death is Cope v. Cogdill. Dissent from denial of cert by Sotomayor.
supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf…
supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf…
This is a thread about the two most important qualified immunity cases on the Supreme Court's docket right now—and maybe ever. Earlier this year, the Fifth Circuit dismissed two Section 1983 cases against (1) TX jailers who did nothing as a suicidal inmate took his own life...
...right in front of them; and (2) TX cops who set a mentally ill man on fire in order to keep him from setting himself on fire (yes, you read that correctly). There's a word for people who need the amount of protection the CA5's qualified immunity doctrine provides: Monsters.
My friend Cate Stetson represents the petitioners in both cases. In her cert petitions (linked below), she dissects the respective CA5 decisions with surgical precision and demonstrates—respectfully but unsparingly—their flagrant departure from controlling legal standards.
Think you’re cynical enough about qualified immunity? Trust me, you’re not. Must-read from @radleybalko. I’ll screenshot key passages below. RT if you’ve had enough of QI already.
#AbolishQI
#EndQualifiedImmunity
@AbolishQI
@campaigntoendqi
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
#AbolishQI
#EndQualifiedImmunity
@AbolishQI
@campaigntoendqi
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
1. Cops commit indisputable rights violation. 
CA10 bends over backwards to let them off the hook. (Must’ve been another day ending in Y.)
CA10: To be clear—you were specifically trained that people have a right to record you in public but you still abused this guy for recording you, and now you think you should get qualified immunity?
Cops: Uh...
CA10: Just messing with you—of COURSE you get QI. And next time too!
Cops: Uh...
CA10: Just messing with you—of COURSE you get QI. And next time too!
More sauce: supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?fi…
I've seen plenty of no-brainer cert petitions in my day, but this one—from a CA10 decision granting QI to cops who were specifically trained that there's a constitutional right to record police in public that they mustn't interfere with—takes the cake. Why?supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?fi…
1. It involves one of the most important constitutional rights SCOTUS has yet to weigh in on: the ability to record police in public to prevent govt from creating false narratives about things like murdering citizens, like MPD tried to do with George Floyd.businessinsider.com/police-initial…
2. No one seriously thinks modern QI has a shred of legitimacy, and virtually everyone agrees it was invented out of whole cloth in a blatant act of judicial policymaking that's supposed to offend a certain kind of jurist (hint: rhymes w "shmoriginalist").
chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewconten…
chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewconten…
Thread: What happens when you subject qualified immunity to rigorous empirical scrutiny?
You discover it’s even worse than you thought. MUCH worse.
Click through for excerpts. /1
@CatoInstitute @campaigntoendqi #AbolishQI #EndQualifiedImmunity
lawfareblog.com/unpacking-deca…
You discover it’s even worse than you thought. MUCH worse.
Click through for excerpts. /1
@CatoInstitute @campaigntoendqi #AbolishQI #EndQualifiedImmunity
lawfareblog.com/unpacking-deca…
“Eliminate”
“Ideological priors”
EDITORIAL: Banning qualified immunity is complicated
NARRATOR: Only if you believe the baseless self-serving prevarications of the LEO-lobby.
fredericksburg.com/opinion/editor… via @NewsInTheBurg
NARRATOR: Only if you believe the baseless self-serving prevarications of the LEO-lobby.
fredericksburg.com/opinion/editor… via @NewsInTheBurg
Like this whopper right here:
Empirically unsupported, factually false, and cynically self-serving. Know who’s *actually* on the hook for lawsuits against cops? Not cops—but we the taxpayers. nyulawreview.org/issues/volume-…
Memo to SCOTUS: No matter how deep you bury your head in the sand, qualified immunity is still out there, ruining people's lives, infantlizing law enforcement, and destroying public confidence in and respect for the criminal "justice" system. You broke it, you fix it. #AbolishQI
Amen.
It just keeps getting better.
If you're finally realizing how utterly broken our criminal justice system is and you're not focused on our near-zero-accountability policy for police or the fact that prosecutors can coerce virtually anyone into pleading guilty to anything—you are missing the boat, my friend.
NYT, Fox, Christian Science Monitor, heck, even the Economist is going after qualified immunity. SCOTUS is gonna need to rent a backhoe to get its head deep enough in the sand to drown out this drumbeat. #AbolishQI
economist.com/united-states/…
economist.com/united-states/…
Why JUDGES should support the elimination of qualified immunity: Because when YOU create a Frankenstein’s monster of injustice that undermines people’s confidence in govt and infantilizes cops, you should fix the mess you made.
How does QI “infantilize” cops? By consistently letting them off the hook on the premise that they could not reasonably have known not to do things that would put an ordinary citizen in the poorhouse--or prison. Think I’m exaggerating? Read on:
Here’s what cops did in the seven QI cases that SCOTUS just sent to conference for 5/15 where federal appellate courts gave the cops a free pass on the premise that they didn’t have sufficient notice not to do these things:
