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from the I-had-to-shoot-him-because-I'm-a-fucking-idiot dept
Fri, Nov 12th 2021 7:39pm — Tim Cushing
OMG FIFTH CIRCUIT. What the actual fuck.
The Fifth Circuit has long been home to law enforcement friendly qualified immunity decisions, perhaps due to some form of obeisance to the Empire of Texas, which is seemingly always an election cycle away from seceding from the States. Texas has long been regarded as the idealistic long arm of the law, some of which can be blamed on the Texas Rangers being nationally-famous despite having done nothing of note for years other than provide consulting services to ridiculous TV shows.
The Fifth has been rebuked twice in recent months by the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court also loves shielding cops from the consequences of their actions, but seems to have realized that lots of people -- some of them in actual power -- were kind of upset with cops committing so much misconduct (a lot of it violent) and being permitted to walk away from it. So, it rejected a couple of really terrible Fifth Circuit decisions and told the Appeals Court to get it right on remand.
We'd all like to believe judges in the upper echelons of the federal court system are above engaging in territorial pissing. But it's hard to read this recent decision awarding qualified immunity to a violent cop as anything but some petty pushback against recent Supreme Court rejections. (h/t Jay Willis)
In this decision [PDF], the Fifth Circuit Appeals Court sides with a cop who put himself in a dangerous situation and reacted violently to his self-created stimuli. As if officers need any more encouragement to escalate situations needlessly or react violently at the first sign of (often imagined) danger.
#immunity #fifthcircuit #policeviolence #texas
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