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0 pointsdragonwriter1y ago0 comments

> Qualified immunity got expanded from an immunity to lawsuits over doing your job appropriately to immunity from prosecution over anything you did while holding the job.

No, it didn't; QI was established in a case accusing Nixon White House officials of corruptly steering government contracts, which is not “doing your job appropriately”.

And QI doesn't apply to everything, but it is a giant catch-22:

It covers anything without clearly established law on the violation of rights (usually, court precedent with very similar circumstances) at the time of the act. But, simply by its own operation, it prevents cases in which it is applied from establishing such law, because it produces dismissals before the merits are reached. (In some cases, lawsuits against the government entity could establish the violation, but their are a different set of immunities there, plus a hugh propensity for cases with even a shadow of a chance to settle without establishing precedent.)

> Why do we need QI for police committing murder? We don't.

QI doesn’t apply to criminal charges (other cops covering for cops and prosecutors not wanting to hurt their relationships with cops are the only “immunity” cops have there, but that alone is a bigger problem than QI; it does compound the problem with QI, because criminal cases are another venue not subject to QI where the clear precedent on rights could be established, if prosecutions actually occurred, and also because the resort to civil lawsuits that QI blocks is, for cops more than any other class of public officers, a workaround for the criminal justice system being loathe to act against them.)

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AdrianB11y ago· 1 in thread

It is not catch-22. This case established that what the people did was wrong, so while they cannot punish them due to QI it establishes the precedent of declaring this is wrong. If anyone in the future will do the same act, there is this precedent saying it is wrong, so QI will not apply.

dragonwriterOP1y ago

Note that this is (potentially, I haven't read the whole decision and there are ways in which the language reported could be accurate but it would not be precedential in context) exceptional case because the appellate court opined the merits of the underlying conduct despite QI being a threshold issue, which is not the normal case (and, indeed, QI will nor mally prevent the existence of a record on which an appellate court could address the merits of the underlying claim.)

Usually, QI leads to a dismissal before the merits are reached; the entire basis for QI is that it is not just a freedom from liability, but a freedom from the risk of having to endure trial. Even if the trial court decides QI doesn't apply and would be inclined to move forward to the merits, that decision on QI is subject to immediate appeal before the case moves forward, per the Supreme Court in Mitchell v Forsyth (1985).

So, even if this case is an exception, QI is very much a catch-22 that is a barrier to establishing the same clearly established law that it requires before officers can be held liable.