| New law being written right before our eyes. But the title of the post isn't actually what was found in this case... This PDF is worth reading over a couple times for full understanding. The topic is extremely relevant to each of our lives and thus quite tangible and easy to reason about. The person in this case had to have a federal judgement made against him (the officers were granted qualified immunity [typical]) and THEN he had to appeal the case to obtain this judgement. A lot of work! (And I'm glad he saw it through!) "The officers’ handcuffing Turner and placing him in the patrol car, as alleged in the amended complaint, were not reasonable under the circumstances. We conclude that a reasonable person in Turner’s position would have understood the officers’ actions 'to constitute a restraint on [Turner’s] freedom of movement of the degree which the law associates with formal arrest.'" Kudos to the judges for their sound judgement. "Grinalds and Dyess are therefore not entitled to qualified immunity at this stage of the litigation on Turner’s Fourth Amendment claim that the officers violated his right to be free from warrantless arrest absent probable cause." Epic. "Even if Turner had sufficiently alleged a constitutional violation, Driver acted objectively reasonably in light of the circumstances—namely, by apprising himself of the situation and acting accordingly. Driver is therefore entitled to qualified immunity on Turner’s Fourth Amendment claims." Fair and reasonable judgement. The dissent is interesting and worth-reading. I agree regarding the First Ammendment findings, but I disagree with the arguments against the majority's Fourth Ammendment judgement. For some understanding of how the Federal Judicial System works, it's worth watching this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_mbk0YhLa0. The law that protects citizens from oppression from officers (as in this case) is United States Code: 42 U.S. Code § 1983 - Civil action for deprivation of rights. It's a short text and you can read it here: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/1983 (Read it a few times over again to get a good idea of what is stated) In this case, the Court of Appeals for the 5th District ruled on this. You can see a map of the federal districts here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_courts_of_appeal... |