Posted on 06/04/2020 4:18:33 AM PDT by knighthawk
A group of Senate Democrats on Thursday introduced a resolution pushing for an end to "qualified immunity," a legal doctrine created by the Supreme Court with the aim of shielding government employees from frivolous lawsuits, but has been decried in recent years as allowing bad actors to escape accountability for violating peoples' rights.
The Democrats' resolution was in reaction to the death of George Floyd while in the custody of the Minneapolis Police Department, an event that has reignited fury against the doctrine on both sides of the aisle.
"Law enforcement should not be completely shielded from accountability when they violate someone’s civil rights," Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., said of the resolution. "It is clear that the Supreme Court’s qualified immunity doctrine is broken and in need of reform. It is time that we say clearly that police officers should be held accountable to the law and to the people they are sworn to protect, period."
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Oh just wait. We have all kinds of new laws coming particularly ‘civil rights’ laws.
It better apply to judges and prosecutors as well, at the state and FEDERAL level.
Sounds like a great idea. Let’s eliminate the “qualified immunity” for the mayor of Minneapolis and the governor of Minnesota while we’re at it.
The devil will be in the details beyond press release headlines.
How about applying it to Senators too?
It never should have been a thing in the first place. Their testimony is also given greater weight in court.
From the donald: Is it weird to anyone else that George Floyd was murdered in a state that is led by Democrat senators, 5 out of 8 Democrat Congressmen, a Democrat Governor. In a City that has a Democrat mayor by a Cop who was hired by a black chief of police but it’s Donald Trump’s fault?
Good luck getting people to be cops if they get continuously sued by everyone they arrest. But maybe that’s the goal?
It’s a supreme court ruling.
Just like abortion and gay marriage
What? The Supreme Court can be wrong????
just thinking.
This means mayors of sanctuary cities can be sued for the mayem illegals cause.
The problem isn’t qualified immunity; it’s that judges and prosecutors have stretched the intent of qualified immunity so far that it now approaches total immunity.
Prosecutors currently have absolute immunity from civil lawsuits even for intentionally withholding exculpatory evidence and getting witnesses to lie.
The Supreme Court’s reasoning for their policy of total immunity is that states can hold prosecutors criminally and bar associations can disbar prosecutors who violate the constitutional rights of defendants; but that virtually never happens.
As Sidney Powell writes in her latest book, changing the law removing immunity is an important step to reforming the criminal justice system. Even if the standard to hold prosecutors liable is beyond a reasonable doubt, that would be a big step in the right direction.
The law should also be changed to allow for private prosecutors who could bring charges through a grand jury proceeding. I’d even allow the government to pay the defense expenses and civil damages.
Someone needs to ask, how would this affect Hillary Clinton’s “immunity” from prosecution?
1. No cop with assets worth protecting would stay on the job (as you said). Police departments would be filled with judgement-proof officers who are one step above a McDonald's clerk.
2. Police unions would then begin demanding personal liability insurance coverage -- up to $10 million per officer, for example -- as part of their collective bargaining agreements. Law enforcement just got more expensive for cities all over the U.S.
3. Smart people in city governments step back and say: "Without qualified immunity, there's no reason to even use public employees in these roles anymore." So a company like Blackwater becomes the official police department in every major U.S. city.
This proposal isn't going anywhere.
That was my thought to.
Governor has us out in the parking lot of restaurants eating in enclosed carnival tents.
How is any different than eating inside?
Instead of companies, they would just contract it out to ANTIFA. Maybe ANTIFA would incorporate? LOL.
I think hell just froze over. SomeThing that I can agree on.
Of course they will find some way to twist it so it does not apply equally to all.
It’s ALL WHITE PEOPLE’s fault. Get with the program.
Lockdown prohibiting a right to protect one's self (disallowing "non-essential" workers the right to perform their job), and loss of right to freely assemble (for religious purposes) are civil rights as well. 8>)
From what I read, this isn’t really aimed at bad cops or bad mayors or bad Senators.
This is aimed squarely at Donald J. Trump.
Say this thing gets passed...can you think of how many idiots Senators, Representatives, and who knows what else start filing frivolous lawsuits at the President? They’ll try to turn him into a beggar!
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