A police officer who was experiencing complications from diabetes when he shot a bystander , according to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The decision thoroughly examined the caselaw on whether courts should consider a police officer's subjective state of mind, or the intent of an officer as "objectively manifested," to determine if a seizure has occurred.
The U.S. Supreme Court may generally review a lower court's constitutional ruling where government officials won a final judgment on qualified immunity grounds. However, in this instance the Court dismissed the case as moot for other reasons.
Without addressing the need for first finding a constitutional violation, the court went straight to the old "second prong" and held that the officers' reliance on consent-once-removed did not violate clearly established law. Since other federal circuits and state Supreme Courts had accepted the doctrine, Callahan could not establish that the officers had violated clearly established law; consequently, they were entitled to qualified immunity.
On Tuesday, the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court wrangled with the question of private lawyers who work on government internal investigations have qualified immunity from civil rights lawsuits. The case of Filarsky v. Delia stems from an internal investigation of firefighter Nicholas B. Delia, who was on sick leave following injuries he sustained on the job. Rialto, Calif., officials suspected that Delia was taking the leave under false pretenses and doing home improvement projects during his time off. To help with the investigation, the city hired private attorney Steve A. Filarsky.
Constitutional Law Qualified immunity
The Fourth Amendment permitted police officers to enter a residence without a warrant if they had a reasonable basis for concluding that there was an imminent threat to their safety and the safety of others, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in granting the officers in the case qualified immunity. A school principal contacted the local police department to investigate a purported threat made by a student to "shoot up" the school. The officers learned that the student had a history of being subjected to bullying and was frequently absent from school and went to his home to interview him. When the officers knocked and identified themselves, no one came to the door and no one answered the phone. The student's mother answered her cell phone but hung up when she learned it was the police.
A police officer who relies in good faith on a prosecutor's legal opinion prior to an arrest that is warranted under the law is presumptively entitled to qualified immunity from a Fourth Amendment claim, the 3rd Circuit has ruled. The plaintiff was a passenger in a car pulled over for speeding, and filmed the traffic stop. The officer thought that the recording violated the Pennsylvania Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Control Act, and called the Assistant District Attorney to confirm. The ADA told him it was appropriate to make an arrest, and the officer did so.
The Pickering balancing test reflects the dual-capacity issue that arises when the State and an individual enter into an employment relationship. In such cases, the government acts as both as a sovereign and as an employer; the individual is concurrently a citizen and an employee. The law, therefore, recognizes the government's discretionary power to make employment decisions affecting the agency's business efficiency and operational concerns, including decisions restricting or retaliating against an individual employee's speech. Here, DeMarco explores the ways in which federal courts have tried to reconcile the fact-specific Pickering balancing test of public employee free speech cases with the "clearly established law" requirement of the qualified immunity doctrine.
In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft authorized the U.S. government to use material-witness arrest warrants to detain and investigate terrorist suspects. At that time, existing law permitted this investigatory use, based primarily on the principle that subjective intent is irrelevant in the standard Fourth Amendment context. In al-Kidd v. Ashcroft, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals erred in denying former Attorney General Ashcroft qualified immunity. Ashcroft’s decision to permit the government to use a valid material-witness arrest warrant to detain Abdullah al-Kidd did not violate al-Kidd’s constitutional rights, regardless of the government’s subjective intent. Furthermore, assuming that the government’s actions were unconsti...
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