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posted by janrinok on Saturday January 21 2017, @04:18AM   Printer-friendly
from the making-it-up-as-they-go-along dept.

The World Socialist Web Site reports

On January 9, the US Supreme Court issued a unanimous summary ruling reversing a decision by the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals and upholding qualified immunity for a police officer who shot and killed Samuel Pauly in an attempt to investigate a traffic incident near Santa Fe, New Mexico in October 2011.

Prior to the shooting, Samuel's brother Daniel was involved in a non-violent road-rage incident in which he stopped his car and confronted two women who he claimed had been tailgating him. Daniel subsequently drove home, where he lived with Samuel. Samuel was at home playing video games and had not been involved in the confrontation. Meanwhile, the occupants of the other vehicle called the police, who were able to locate the house where the brothers lived.

At that point, no crime had been committed and there was no legal justification to arrest anyone or to enter or search any house. While the frequency of "road-rage" incidents is not a healthy sign, they do constitute a fairly common occurrence in American social life.

According to Daniel, when two police officers arrived at the brothers' house they failed to identify themselves. Not realizing that it was the police, and believing that they were being burglarized, the brothers armed themselves with weapons. The brothers warned, "We have guns!" The encounter escalated and there was an exchange of gunfire in which no one was struck. Then a third officer arrived and, without warning, shot Samuel dead.

The phrase "qualified immunity" refers to a judge-made doctrine that has no basis in the text of the US Constitution, notwithstanding the claims by various Supreme Court justices to be handing down the Constitution's "original" meaning. In recent decades, this doctrine has quietly been built up to huge proportions within the judicial system, largely without significant media commentary or public discussion. It now plays an important role in blocking civil rights cases and encouraging the ongoing epidemic of police brutality.

According to this authoritarian and anti-democratic doctrine, a judge can unilaterally decide a case in favor of a police officer--even if the officer's conduct violated the Constitution--if the judge determines that the police officer acted "reasonably" in light of previous Supreme Court decisions. If qualified immunity is awarded to the police officer, the case can be thrown out of court, never going before a jury, and costs can be imposed against the victim or the victim's survivors.

[...] The Supreme Court held that the officer who killed Samuel "did not violate clearly established law" because "existing precedent" had not "placed the statutory or constitutional question beyond debate".

[...] In the written opinion, the justices went out of their way to complain that the lower courts were not granting qualified immunity to police officers often enough.

Clearly, having appointments made by Democrat presidents doesn't lessen Authoritarianism in the USA.


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  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday January 21 2017, @04:58AM

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Saturday January 21 2017, @04:58AM (#456858) Homepage

    That road-rage is no joke.

    Many of us have run into Prius drivers on the highway, driving in an obnoxiously stupid manner. Prius drivers are by far the most stupid and obnoxious drivers on the highway, and the reason for that is because when their drivers aren't driving they're riding their bikes swerving in the middle of turn-lanes and generally behaving like douchebags wherever they are.

    But back to the article, well, That's the good ol' Liberal tolarance working for you. Or the end-result of Calhoun's mouse experiments manifesting themselves. People hate each other more than ever nowadays, because there are too many of them, and the connection enabled by technology is accelerating the process.

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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @05:38AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @05:38AM (#456867)

    "Prius drivers are by far the most stupid and obnoxious drivers on the highway". Bwahahaha... The most ignorant drivers in San Diego are the wannabe jacked up 4X4s & Hummers that have probably never been driven off road. I used to drive my 62 Buick Le Sabre offroad and catch air a lot more than those bozos. Runner up... Asian drivers, who only look straight ahead even when changing lanes.

  • (Score: 1) by tftp on Sunday January 22 2017, @12:13AM

    by tftp (806) on Sunday January 22 2017, @12:13AM (#457166) Homepage

    Many of us have run into Prius drivers on the highway, driving in an obnoxiously stupid manner. Prius drivers are by far the most stupid and obnoxious drivers on the highway, and the reason for that is because when their drivers aren't driving they're riding their bikes swerving in the middle of turn-lanes and generally behaving like douchebags wherever they are.

    Maybe that was true 10 years ago, when hybrids just started appearing and attracted undivided attention of save-Earth crowd. But today there are many other hybrids, and people buy them not for fuel economy but just because they are nice cars with CVT and are very well assembled. I do have a Gen. II Prius, I bought it in 2005 - not because I wanted to save the planet, but because it was time to buy a car, and this one was competitively priced and suited my needs.

    Naturally, Prius is not a muscle car and won't appeal to young ricer wannabes. It is a car for middle-aged, well established people who value comfort, quality, peace and quiet. They are often conservative and don't change lanes every minute. They don't drive way above the speed limit - not because the car can't, but because they don't feel a need to do so. Most of modern Prius drivers (per my personal calculations - I know some) have never ridden a bike since they graduated from school. I rode a scooter (Honda Elite 150 [wikipedia.org], IIRC) when I was younger, but currently keep only the car.