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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: 2) by tisI on Saturday January 21 2017, @07:49PM

    by tisI (5866) on Saturday January 21 2017, @07:49PM (#457070)

    I recall Hitler's gestapo and the Soviet police use this same tactic. Bust doors down. Shoot everyone inside.

    And people wonder why cops are, and will continue to be, shot more frequently on the streets of Merka.
    Cops need to understand something. America is a heavily armed society. They/You made it this way.
    Both sides have guns. The cop's are better. The armed GTA type common scum outnumber cops 1000:1

    My money is on the armed peasants.
    The unrest is only beginning

    Trump's got it now
    he can fix it ..

    --
    "Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself."
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