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.<\/p>\n
In the popular mind, I guess that word “qualified” is taken to mean that the officer qualifies for<\/em> immunity as a consequence of his office. But here it is a legal term of art meaning “conditional”, contrasting with the absolute<\/em> immunity enjoyed by judges and prosecutors in their<\/em> abuses of discretion.<\/p>\n 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<\/em> 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?)<\/p>\n When the pig is so unlucky as to violate “clearly established law”, he still has<\/em> qualified immunity, which happens not to protect him for this incident<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 … Continue reading