News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:New Mexico is the second state to ban qualified immunity by barnaclejive on Thursday April 08, 2021 @02:21AM (#26735676)
"without fear of personal liability"

You see no issue with that, seriously?

Re:New Mexico is the second state to ban qualified immunity by tjs8rj on Thursday April 08, 2021 @02:45AM (#26735816)
To be clear: qualified immunity is about civil liability. It doesn’t protect from criminal liability. Qualified immunity isn’t the reason cops don’t go to jail for murder, because it doesn’t apply at all for criminal procedures
Re:New Mexico is the second state to ban qualified immunity by thaumasiotes on Thursday April 08, 2021 @02:50AM (#26735847)
That would be fine if it were possible to criminally prosecute the cops.

But it isn't; only the government can do that, and they don't want to.

Re:New Mexico is the second state to ban qualified immunity by lawnchair_larry on Thursday April 08, 2021 @05:43AM (#26736858)
They are doing it right now.
Re:New Mexico is the second state to ban qualified immunity by Broken_Hippo on Thursday April 08, 2021 @06:09AM (#26737001)
I don't know. There is a long history of cops being "prosecuted" in court theater and being found not guilty. This is generally only in high-profile cases. It is still fairly common to simply suspend an officer or "fire" them, allowing them to get a job in another department. So common that when we investigate folks in the high-profile cases, a history of misconduct isn't a surprise.
Re:New Mexico is the second state to ban qualified immunity by hellbannedguy on Thursday April 08, 2021 @06:04AM (#26736980)
This is an extremely rare event.

In this case their was abundant video.

Usually no one is around when cops are being bad, and their cop cams are always flipped off?

Re:New Mexico is the second state to ban qualified immunity by thebradbain on Thursday April 08, 2021 @02:59AM (#26735890)
However, a civilian cannot normally press criminal charges against a cop, so the distinction is moot in practice.
Re:New Mexico is the second state to ban qualified immunity by marvin on Thursday April 08, 2021 @03:26AM (#26736038)
That’s interesting. I thought it gave immunity against criminal prosecution if the officer «accidentally» did something criminal.

The obvious solution is to ensure that police are actually tried and sentenced like regular citizens if they break criminal law, but I suppose we can’t have nice things.

Re:New Mexico is the second state to ban qualified immunity by JumpCrisscross on Thursday April 08, 2021 @02:38AM (#26735781)
> You see no issue with that, seriously?

Qualified immunity isn't a get-out-of-jail-free card. It is released, for example, when a government official breaks clearly established law. (Counterfactual: the courts have been very narrow in interpreting what "clearly established" means.)

Re:New Mexico is the second state to ban qualified immunity by stormbrew on Thursday April 08, 2021 @03:06AM (#26735922)
To expand on just how absurdly narrow courts interpret "clearly established", there's this example from the wikipedia page on qualified immunity[1] for eg.

> Critics have cited examples such as a November 2019 ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, which found that an earlier court case ruling it unconstitutional for police to sic dogs on suspects who have surrendered by lying on the ground did not apply under the "clearly established" rule to a case in which Tennessee police allowed their police dog to bite a surrendered suspect because the suspect had surrendered not by lying down but by sitting on the ground and raising his hands.

The net effect of this appears to basically be that it's impossible to prove literally anything pierces qualified immunity unless it was ruled on prior to the establishment of qualified immunity as a defense. How exactly can you create precedent when you require nearly identical precedent to set it? It's a blatant catch-22. Like, literally something that could have been in the book Catch 22.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity

Re:New Mexico is the second state to ban qualified immunity by gwd on Thursday April 08, 2021 @04:18AM (#26736328)
Even better is the police who just stole stuff, because there was no "clearly established" law against stealing stuff:

https://newrepublic.com/article/157342/supreme-court-police-...

Re:New Mexico is the second state to ban qualified immunity by dragonwriter on Thursday April 08, 2021 @03:42AM (#26736114)
> Qualified immunity isn’t a get-out-of-jail-free card.

No, its a get-out-of-civil-liability-free card.

> It is released, for example, when a government official breaks clearly established law.

No, its not. As well as meeting the extremely narrow standard established for violating “clearly established law” and act must also fail to meet the extremely broad standard established for being an “objectively reasonable action”; otherwise, even if it violates a clearly established legal right, it remains protected by QI.

While some protection loosely similar to QI may make sense, the actual rules around QI, both at the high level and in the details of how the high-level rules are applied, are particularly bad, especially, in practice, in the case of law enforcement officials, who practice within the law enforcement community puts at greatly reduced likelihood of being held criminally accountable for violations of rights than non-law-enforcement government agents.

Re:New Mexico is the second state to ban qualified immunity by austincheney on Thursday April 08, 2021 @06:19AM (#26737061)
> No, its not.

There is no qualified immunity protection upon the conviction of a criminal act regardless of how narrow or broad underlying factors are.

Re:New Mexico is the second state to ban qualified immunity by jellicle on Thursday April 08, 2021 @11:16AM (#26739853)
You seem to have confused a true statement (qualified immunity is about torts, not crimes) with a false one (if there was a crime, then there can't be any qualified immunity claim in a corresponding civil case).
Re:New Mexico is the second state to ban qualified immunity by zrail on Thursday April 08, 2021 @06:34AM (#26737146)
You have to be convicted first. Police don't even get indicted.
Re:New Mexico is the second state to ban qualified immunity by ceejayoz on Thursday April 08, 2021 @07:12AM (#26737348)
That’s what you have friendly prosecutors for.