Court: Qualified Immunity Protects District Attorney Who Lied To State Legislators About A Wrongfully-Convicted Man

by | Feb 3, 2019

Court: Qualified Immunity Protects District Attorney Who Lied To State Legislators About A Wrongfully-Convicted Man

by | Feb 3, 2019

Qualified immunity has taken the court system as far away from justice as any one doctrine can. Rights can be freely abused so long as the abuser does it in a novel way or can mumble something about “feared for my safety” while under oath. For the most part, it just sucks to be an average citizen whose rights have been violated. Unless you can show a court held this specific violation — under very specific circumstances — to be unlawful, you’re stuck with zero recourse for obvious wrong perpetrated by the government.

It’s not just abusive cops that benefit from qualified immunity. It’s also vindictive district attorneys, like the one in a recent case [PDF] reviewed by the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. A man falsely accused of kidnapping and rape spent seven years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit before being exonerated by a DNA test. The results of this test were given to district attorney Spencer Lawton, who confirmed the results. The conviction was vacated and the state wisely decided not to take another prosecutorial pass at the falsely accused man.

So far, so good, except for the seven years of freedom wrongfully taken from Douglas Echols. When lawmakers introduced a bill offering compensation for Echol’s wrongful imprisonment, Spencer Lawton decided to start lying.

Read the rest at techdirt.com

Tim Cushing

Tim Cushing's work can be found at Techdirt.

View all posts

Our Books

Shop books published by the Libertarian Institute.

libetarian institute longsleeve shirt

Our Books

cb0cb1ef 3fcb 417d 80d8 4eef7bbd8290

Recent Articles

Recent

Democracy Cannot Lead to Self-Governance

Democracy Cannot Lead to Self-Governance

Democracies end up anti-democratic because only a tiny minority of radicals (politicians, interest groups, major corporations, etc.) achieve power centralized in the capital. They work the levers of government, place their servants in power, and advertise via...

read more
TGIF: The US Empire’s 72-Year War on Iran

TGIF: The US Empire’s 72-Year War on Iran

The likely temporary Israel-Iran ceasefire notwithstanding, if you need proof of how despicable Donald Trump is, consider this: When asked last week if he would ask Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to stop bombing Iran, which had already said it would stop retaliating...

read more

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This