Law Enforcement Beat This Innocent Man to a Pulp. Will the Supreme Court Allow Him To Seek Recourse?

[Nevilledog]

https://reason.com/2023/03/23/law-enforcement-beat-this-innocent-man-to-a-pulp-will-the-supreme-court-allow-him-to-seek-recourse/

It has been almost a decade since James King, then a college student in Grand Rapids, Michigan, was choked and beaten by an FBI agent and a local police detective after they mistook him for a suspect with whom he shared no resemblance. And yet, after all this time, it is unclear if King will be permitted to merely ask a jury if he deserves some compensation for the government's misconduct, the likes of which left his face temporarily disfigured.

That legal odyssey is finally nearing a conclusion as King asks the U.S. Supreme Court to consider his case for a second time. If the justices choose to hear his plea, they'll have to decide if FBI agent Douglas Brownback and Grand Rapids detective Todd Allen are immune from facing a civil suit for their actions, simply because of their government status.

In 2014, King was walking from one job to the next when Brownback and Allen, who were not in uniform, accosted him without identifying themselves as law enforcement. "Are you mugging me?" King asked. He then ran. The two officers, who were part of a police task force, responded by tackling him to the ground, beating his face to a pulp, and choking him unconscious. But they were looking for someone named Aaron Davison, who had been accused of stealing alcohol from his former employer's apartment, and who, perhaps more importantly, looked nothing like King.

Even still, police arrested King and handcuffed him to a hospital bed as he received treatment, despite the fact that the only malfeasance here was committed against, not by, King.

What followed in the proceeding years is a case study in the level of protection given to rogue government actors and the byzantine obstacle course that victims of government misconduct have to navigate should they want the privilege of achieving any sort of recourse. Indeed, King's case has ricocheted up and down the ladder of the U.S. legal system, from the bottom to the top and back again.

*snip*

[underpants]

1. So you can't sue unless someone already has? How can there be precedent?

The officers first received qualified immunity, the legal doctrine that blocks victims of government misbehavior from seeking recourse in civil court if the precise way the state violated their rights has not yet been "clearly established" in a prior court precedent.

[MayReasonRule]

2. Qualified Immunity Is Butt Nugget Wisdom From SCOTUS

Which is apparently where those members that support it sense of taste resides as well.

It's not even lip service to liberty. No reach arounds, no dutch rudders allowed...

That decision is depraved.
That decision fosters depravity.

It's a featured benefit.

Intimidation
Incarceration
Extermination

Still the same.
Same as it always was.

Nationalist Christian Socialists still have the same playbook, no matter the name, the pearls, or the lipstick.