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Clark Neily Profile picture
@ConLawWarrior
Sep 16, 2020 • 5 tweets • 3 min read • Read on X
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
Like this whopper right here: Image
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-… Image
Taking anything police say about qualified immunity at face value is journalistic malpractice. Here are the true facts: cato.org/publications/p…
#AbolishQI
@AbolishQI
unlawfulshield.com

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More from @ConLawWarrior

Clark Neily Profile picture
Apr 26
Just beneath the surface of the Trump immunity case lies the fact that our CJ system has gone so off the rails that few people—especially if they’ve done anything interesting like run for office or start a business—can be confident they haven’t committed multiple felonies. /1
Is it reasonable for future presidents and executive-branch officials to be concerned that the decision whether to prosecute them for *something* they did in office will end up being purely a matter of prosecutorial largesse? Absolutely—just like the rest of us. /2
We live in a wildly overcriminalized society where even the govt has lost track of how many laws are on the books—true fact: DOJ has repeatedly tried and failed to count just the number of federal criminal laws on the books, which is of course just the tip of the iceberg. /3
Read 10 tweets
Clark Neily Profile picture
Mar 30
Why have retaliatory-arrest cases—including recently argued Gonzalez v. Trevino—so confounded SCOTUS? Simple: Because courts have become deeply committed to ensuring that govt officials who’ve been plausibly accused of misconduct can avoid jury trials. /1
scotusblog.com/case-files/cas…
Consider how low the stakes are for the govt officials in Gonzales compared to most criminal defendants—none are going to jail, it’s highly unlikely any will be fired or meaningfully disciplined if found liable, and they’ll be indemnified for any damage award regardless. /2
Truly, the stakes could scarcely be lower for the govt defendants who’ve been plausibly alleged to have grossly abused their official powers to inflict political payback on a 76yo grandmother, FFS. So why on earth are the justices tying themselves up in knots over these cases? /3
Read 10 tweets
Clark Neily Profile picture
Jan 7
More thoughts on qualified immunity. Besides the fact that it is lawless, immoral, and bad policy, QI reflects breathtaking political naïveté by gratuitously creating a policy that confers a massive institutional benefit on a powerful special interest (LEOs) that’s paid for by /1
Victims of civil rights violations. Contrary to the self-serving pablum you’ll hear from its various apologists, QI’s primary function in our system is not to protect cops from frivolous lawsuits (there are other tools for that), it’s to protect cops from MERITORIOUS claims. /2
Good example is the cops whom Tony Timpa called for help during a mental health crisis and ended up asphyxiating him while joking about it. They fought like cats for QI precisely because they understood how a jury was likely to—and ultimately did—react. /3 keranews.org/criminal-justi…
Image
Read 12 tweets
Clark Neily Profile picture
Jan 5
US police are very good at going after low-hanging fruit like traffic infractions, nonsense regulatory infractions, and low-level drug crimes—which is why ~80% of arrests are for misdemeanors. But they’re just awful at solving serious crimes like murder and rape, which is why /1
US clearance rates for homicide and other serious crimes are among the lowest in the developed world. Also, police enjoy low levels of trust in communities where crime is most prevalent, partly because they prioritize enforcement of BS “crimes” like this and partly because /2
They are, as an institution, fundamentally untrustworthy. Police are trained to use deceit as a routine investigative tool, and recordings of police blatantly lying to motorists, bystanders, random teenagers, etc, are endemic. One thing that would go a long way to restoring /3
Read 7 tweets
Clark Neily Profile picture
Sep 30, 2023
1/ Few policy choices are more clearly spelled out in the text of the Constitution than the decision to embrace "Blackstone's ratio"—i.e., it's better that ten guilty men go free than one innocent man be convicted. That's why the Bill of Rights spills so much ink on crim pro.
2/ Of course, a govt that believes you are guilty of a crime—and is staffed by careerists with a clinically delusional sense of their own infallibility that flows from their near-total unaccountability—would strongly prefer not to be on the wrong end of Blackstone's ratio.
3/ Might there be some way for govt officials who operate the machinery of criminal adjudication to hack the defendant-favoring constitutional design that includes such things as proof beyond a reasonable doubt, jury unanimity, double jeopardy, and no appeals from acquittals?
Read 13 tweets
Clark Neily Profile picture
Sep 26, 2023
1/ Judges will tell you—and themselves—that qualified immunity is mostly about protecting police and other govt officials from distracting, potentially meritless litigation and constant second-guessing of their reasonable professional decisions. This is blatantly false.
2/The rationalizations underlying SCOTUS’s invention of QI in 1982—namely, that police face financial ruin from damages awards; that they read court decisions in order to keep abreast of relevant doctrinal developments; and that there are other reliable avenues of accountability—
3/…have all been shown to be complete nonsense. The only remaining rationalization for QI is that the failure of Congress to repeal it means QI is a democratically preferred and politically legitimate policy. But that rationalization too is unmitigated crap. In reality…
Read 10 tweets

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