The Supreme Court invented qualified immunity. Now, a judge’s blistering opinion shows why it must go.
Opinion by Ruth Marcus
Deputy editorial page editor
August 5, 2020 at 6:22 p.m. EDT
U.S. District Court Judge Carlton Reeves couldn’t do justice for the plaintiff in his court, who had sued over police abuse. The Supreme Court won’t let him. So Reeves issued an opinion that dutifully followed the law — and blistered the justices for the all-but-insurmountable barrier they have constructed to shield police officers from being held to account.
Reeves, a Barack Obama nominee who sits in Jackson, Miss., and is the second Black federal judge in the history of the state, produced one of the most powerful pieces of legal writing I have encountered. His opinion is a 72-page cri de coeur directed at the Supreme Court, arguing that it must do away with the doctrine of “qualified immunity” for law enforcement officials.
Reeves begins with the larger context. “Clarence Jamison wasn’t jaywalking.” Footnote: “That was Michael Brown,” shot by police in Ferguson, Mo. “He wasn’t outside playing with a toy gun.” Footnote: “That was 12-year-old Tamir Rice,” shot in a park by a Cleveland police officer. “He wasn’t suspected of ‘selling loose, untaxed cigarettes.’ ” Footnote: “That was Eric Garner,” the Staten Island man who died after an officer put him in a chokehold.
And on and on, for 19 excruciating footnotes, George Floyd and Philando Castile, Sandra Bland and Breonna Taylor, until we get to Jamison’s non-offense: “He didn’t make an ‘improper lane change.’ He didn’t have a broken tail light. He wasn’t driving over the speed limit. He wasn’t driving under the speed limit. No, Clarence Jamison was a Black man driving a Mercedes convertible.” In 2013, in Pelahatchie, Miss., an hour south of Philadelphia, Miss., where Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney were killed in 1964. Because his temporary tag — he had just purchased the car — was allegedly folded over.
As Reeves recounts, Jamison’s fate was less dire than that of many others: “As he made his way home to South Carolina from a vacation in Arizona, Jamison was pulled over and subjected to one hundred and ten minutes of an armed police officer badgering him, pressuring him, lying to him and then searching his car top to bottom for drugs. Nothing was found. Jamison isn’t a drug courier. He’s a welder.”
Jamison wasn’t shot. He wasn’t killed. But he was frightened and humiliated, and his car suffered several thousand dollars in damage to its seats and convertible top. And, as Reeves found, his constitutional rights were violated: Officer Nick McClendon’s search of Jamison’s car violated the Fourth Amendment, and Jamison’s supposed “consent” to the search could hardly be deemed voluntary.
more:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-supreme-court-invented-qualified-immunity-now-a-judges-blistering-opinion-shows-why-it-must-go/2020/08/05/f72778e6-d74a-11ea-930e-d88518c57dcc_story.html?hpid=hp_save-opinions-float-right-4-0_opinion-card-f-right%3Ahomepage%2Fstory-ans
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