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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.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @11:22PM
I agree that the AC is the kind of person that is wrong with the US today, and around the world. They have VERY strong opinions on issues that they've never bothered to even try to understand,
Fuck you.
EVERYBODY trusts sources because none of us are experts.
Its idiots who think they can understand stuff without the guidance of experts that are the problem.
Hannity is no expert on anything but Hannity.
Fuckface up thread thinks that non-programmers can understand code just because its commented for an audience of programmers.
Here's the problem. Programming is 10% code and 90% domain knowledge. Comments don't give you domain knowledge any more than footnotes in the a scotus ruling give you domain knowledge either.
Words have meaning in context and its idiots like you who think they can figure out that meaning without that context who end up believing in pizzagate, spirit cooking and a billion other conspiracy theories built on nothing but ignorance, coincidence and gullible partisanship.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @06:14PM
Holy cow, you are decidedly ignorant. Some of us are ignorant on topics we are unfamiliar because of some barrier of understanding, such as not having a mathematical or science background, or because something is expressed in a language or terminology that is wholly unknown to us. But you make an active effort to remain ignorant. Go follow that link to the judgement. It is only 9 pages, with one of them a one page concurring opinion by Ginzberg. Half of that PDF lays out, very clearly, the background of the case in a step-by-step manner. The remaining few pages address the reasoning behind the judgement. It is very clear and uses very plain language. You can only give a man the tools, you can't make him use them.
Personally, I try to limit my very strong opinions to things that I am reasonably sure about. You might want to try that some time, or at least in this case, try reading the 6th grade level language in the summary and express why you don't agree with it. Supreme Court rulings are not highly technical requiring an understanding of very fine points of law. That's what lower courts are for. The Supreme Court takes on carefully selected cases to clarify general legal positions. Other than a very few latin words that are descriptive words for certain kinds of cases and rulings, the rulings are written simply and clearly by design.
The More You Know!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 23 2017, @08:08PM
> Holy cow, you are decidedly ignorant.
And you are WILLFULLY ignorant.
At least I am smart enough to know that I don't know everything.
> It is only 9 pages
Wooosh!
It isn't the 9 pages that matter. its everything else that is not in the 9 pages. All the contextual knowledge that is acquired through the course of a lifetime in the legal profession. That's what the judges draw on, its what guides them to pick the arguments they pick and discard the arguments they discard.
> Personally, I try to limit my very strong opinions to things that I am reasonably sure about.
You are doing a shit-ass job of it. Thinking that everything you need to know about a SCOTUS ruling is contained in just 9 pages. If it were really that simple it would not have had to go to the supreme court of the land to get worked out.
You are arguing against the value of expertise. How very trumpian of you.