Not a week goes by when I don’t read that some trial court has “granted qualified immunity” to some criminal with a badge. That’s inaccurate. The aggressor was granted qualified immunity by the Supreme Court when it invented that doctrine in 1982.
In the popular mind, I guess that word “qualified” is taken to mean that the officer qualifies for immunity as a consequence of his office. But here it is a legal term of art meaning “conditional”, contrasting with the absolute immunity enjoyed by judges and prosecutors in their abuses of discretion.
When a trial court says to a plaintiff, “No recourse for you, because you haven’t cited a published precedent finding liability with exactly similar facts,” it applies the QI rule; but there is nothing qualified about the dismissal. (The q-word would apply if the judge were to dismiss the case without prejudice, allowing the possibility of a new trial if new facts come to light. Does that ever happen in police cases?)
When the pig is so unlucky as to violate “clearly established law”, he still has qualified immunity, which happens not to protect him for this incident.