[HN Gopher] "The Onion" Files a Supreme Court Brief
___________________________________________________________________
"The Onion" Files a Supreme Court Brief
Author : fortran77
Score : 376 points
Date : 2022-10-04 13:29 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| bloomingeek wrote:
| Fortunately the police didn't shoot him dead in his front yard.
| Today's community law enforcement is out of control when it comes
| to common sense. With their attitude of "How dare you criticize
| us!" and their huge hero egos, it's a wonder all of us aren't
| scared to call the cops for help.
| chasd00 wrote:
| Can anyone file a brief with the court? I'd like to file one.
| There are too many states these days, they should eliminate
| three.
| cm42 wrote:
| People clamoring for satire warnings and such should be placed on
| a watchlist of some kind, or perhaps enrolled in some kind of re-
| educational program, lest they mistake a book of jokes for an
| instruction manual and get somebody hurt or something.
| TMWNN wrote:
| As one who's been reading _The Onion_ for a very, very, very
| long time, the amicus brief is a masterpiece and I hope it is
| studied in law schools and English classes everywhere. But I
| wonder how many of the commenters feverishly denouncing
| qualified immunity, and smugly telling themselves "Boy, those
| Parma police officers are real idiots", insist on and/or 100%
| require a "/s" or "lol" in any joke, satire, or parody to "get
| it"?
| 6stringmerc wrote:
| Til Tok trends have a way of working themselves out one way or
| another.
| c3534l wrote:
| It really is an indication that someone lacks critical thinking
| skills. To read satire and never question its validity implies
| they accepted it uncritically, never asked if it was plausible
| or reasonable, never thought if the source was trustworthy,
| never thought to get an independent view. The inability to
| understand sarcasm and irony really does speak poorly of a
| person's ability to navigate the world of information overload
| we live in.
| [deleted]
| mabbo wrote:
| > The Onion intends to continue its socially valuable role
| bringing the disinfectant of sunlight into the halls of power...
| And it would vastly prefer that sunlight not to be measured out
| to its writers in 15-minute increments in an exercise yard.[0]
|
| It's funny, but it's also an incredibly important point- for the
| Onion this case lets them know if the police can arrest their
| employees because they don't like what's written.
|
| [0]https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-293/242292/2022..
| . (last paragraph)
| labrador wrote:
| Just use the Tucker Carlson defense: "No rational person would
| think what I said was actually true"
| danielodievich wrote:
| Onion is a national, nay, worldwide treasure. I remember the
| furor it caused when they craigslisted their desk from the
| writer's room. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-onion-writers-
| room-table-.... Some lucky person got it, and it was a steal,
| too!
| debacle wrote:
| A friend of mine recently graduated from college with some amount
| of debt.
|
| He put up a "lemonade and tequila" stand outside of his home,
| with an "out of stock" sign under "tequila." It was silly and a
| bit childish.
|
| Some time later he received a notice from the state that he was
| selling liquor without a license. His hearing is next month.
| yalogin wrote:
| The police in the US have become too powerful, too
| uncontrollable. There seems to be no accountability. If the
| department and union wants to, they can defend and cover up any
| crime committed by their folks. It's very odd that majority of
| the people think this is ok. This is just another case where the
| department knowingly did the illegal thing, but the courts are
| protecting them too. Overall it's quite appalling.
| fallingfrog wrote:
| Well, once you put a uniform on someone and a gun in their
| hand, they instantly become an angelic figure of pure virtue.
| /s
| [deleted]
| ttyprintk wrote:
| https://archive.ph/G4Bnn
| jononomo wrote:
| How can I get an archive version of a different NYTimes
| article?
|
| I'm interested in this one:
| https://archive.nytimes.nytimes.com/2022/10/04/opinion/us-me...
| mikequinlan wrote:
| https://archive.ph/3uZTd
| [deleted]
| kazinator wrote:
| > _filed a friend-of-the-court brief on Monday._
|
| Like _amicus_ , but for a third grade reading comprehension exam
| where dictionaries are not allowed.
| ars wrote:
| I really want to believe that the lawyers signed on the brief
| legally changed their last names in order to sound funnier.
| dominotw wrote:
| germinalphrase wrote:
| I share your general concern; however, "making them remove
| content" is factually different than "guided by the FBI" (as
| you phrase it). Facebook decidedly _chose_ to remove that
| content. They were not coerced to do so, and MZ hasn 't said
| otherwise.
| Nifty3929 wrote:
| As platforms are becoming more tightly regulated and
| "pressured" by various government agencies and interest
| groups, I believe the line is blurring. We're seeing our
| large corporations become de-facto arms of the government.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| Is there a difference between someone being charged with a
| crime for a joke, or simply having the joke removed from the
| platform it was posted to? I tend to think so.
|
| I think platform censorship is a completely different beast
| than government persecution and prosecution. Is it bad? maybe,
| but the two don't seem very comparable to me.
| Nifty3929 wrote:
| I agree with you - though as platforms are becoming more
| tightly regulated and "pressured" by various government
| agencies and interest groups, I believe the line is blurring.
| We're seeing our large corporations become de-facto arms of
| the government.
| cestith wrote:
| Platform censorship by the owner of the platform isn't a
| First Amendment issue. The FBI asserting government pressure
| to convince or coerce the platform to remove it is government
| censorship.
|
| Where the line is drawn between a polite request and coercion
| is ... tricky when you're talking about the federal
| government in an era of increasing pressure to regulate
| social media.
| dominotw wrote:
| > I think platform censorship is a completely different beast
| than government persecution and prosecution.
|
| Yes but the complaint here is that of its effects on free
| speech. They are equivalent from that perspective, no?
| plorkyeran wrote:
| No, having to worry about your content being removed and
| having to worry about retribution do not have equivalent
| effects on free speech.
| happyopossum wrote:
| Spending 4 days in jail is very different from having one of
| your FB posts removed.
| tempodox wrote:
| > Anthony Novak spent four days in jail over a Facebook page he
| created in 2016 that mocked his local police department.
|
| This whole thing should be an Onion satire but it's reality.
| meragrin_ wrote:
| Have you seen the content posted? The only thing I've been able
| to find about it does not give me the feeling the page was
| parody.
| jjulius wrote:
| >The only thing I've been able to find about it does not give
| me the feeling the page was parody.
|
| Can you share?
| [deleted]
| meragrin_ wrote:
| Not really worth bothering. It was a single picture which
| showed only a small part which was an exact copy. No real
| content.
| daanlo wrote:
| Read the pdf by the onion. It has examples of the content,
| which is clearly parody e.g. his post suggested that the
| police is providing free abortions to teenagers in a mini
| van. I guess these days the line between parody and nut
| case is thin ;)
| jjulius wrote:
| I was just hoping that OP could clarify what didn't seem
| like parody to them. ;)
| compiler-guy wrote:
| Publishing nutcase craziness also isn't a crime.
| jaclaz wrote:
| This is an image of part of it:
|
| https://metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/city-
| parma.pn...
|
| and another one:
|
| https://static1.therichestimages.com/wordpress/wp-
| content/up...
|
| as I see it, it is not particularly subtle.
| classified wrote:
| Black humor is rarely subtle.
| frumper wrote:
| Even if not parody, it's not a crime to post made up stuff on
| Facebook.
| meragrin_ wrote:
| If it induces panic or a crime, sure it is.
| nvrspyx wrote:
| If it's libelous, couldn't it be? I'm not saying that's the
| case here, but wanted to point out that defamation is a
| crime, or tort depending on the case.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| In the United States (but not necessarily elsewhere),
| public officials have a very high bar to overcome if
| they're making a defamation claim.
|
| As First Brother Billy Carter once put it, "You can call
| a congressman a no-good sumbitch and he can't do anything
| about it."
| alistairSH wrote:
| Ohio doesn't have a criminal libel statute (13 states do,
| and most are no usually enforced).
| hermitdev wrote:
| Libel & defemation are civil matters, not criminal.
|
| Edit: bad autocorrect
| cestith wrote:
| They also require a statement presented as fact, not
| opinion, which is false and designed to harm someone's
| reputation.
| nvrspyx wrote:
| Some states have criminal defamation statutes, which is
| why I mentioned it depends on the case. I could've made
| that more clear though. As another comment mentioned,
| Ohio isn't one of those states though.
|
| My main point was that sometimes "making stuff up online"
| is a crime, or in the least, unlawful. And as far as
| colloquialism goes, crime, illegal, and unlawful are used
| interchangeably by the general public.
| alistairSH wrote:
| The parody page heading was "We no crime."
|
| Content included things like "Stay inside and catch up with
| family day" as a crime-prevention measure.
|
| The Parma PD arrested him for disrupting the police, which as
| far as I can tell was based on a whopping 12 minutes spent
| answering phone calls from other residents who couldn't
| distinguish parody from real life any more.
| neaden wrote:
| Except under oath the cops said no one actually thought it
| was real, they just called to complain.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Yah, that officer is a real POS. He initially testified
| they thought the page was real. Only changed his tune
| under appeal.
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| Sounds like it's the complainers who should be prosecuted
| for unnecessary use of police line.
| vuln wrote:
| Eh. They didn't call 911 they called the non emergency
| number.
|
| Calling and asking about the Facebook page would be the
| same as calling an asking what hours a certain precinct
| is open or a noise complaint.
|
| Staffing the non emergency line is an administrative duty
| not an operational duty. One person staffs this desk.
| Their only job is to take non emergency calls on shift.
|
| Edit: I would be more understanding if 911 was
| effectively DDoS by callers inquiring about the Facebook
| page causing real emergencies and help to be delayed. But
| this is not the case at all. The people did the right
| thing by calling the non emergency number and the police
| arrest a guy because they were forced to answer questions
| about a parody Facebook page.
| vkou wrote:
| If we're going to arrest people over spewing bullshit on
| Facebook, that causes disruption of public services and
| welfare, I have a _very_ long list.
| yrgulation wrote:
| A lot of past decade news sound like onion satire. Both in
| europe and the us. We have to be careful which way we steer
| things as a lot of things appear to take a very very non
| democratic non western direction.
| brightball wrote:
| There's an entire satire site that categorizes parody
| articles they wrote which later became reality.
| panxyh wrote:
| Would you be so kind?
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > ...non western direction.
|
| What does this mean and how is it relevant to the article or
| the parent comment? A lot of the recent rollback of rights
| are very much "western" in nature. The overturn of roe v.
| wade, for example, is a long standing project of various
| Christian groups. Nor is "the west" immune to dictatorship -
| you only have to go back to WWII for proof of that.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| "Non-western" was originally used by right-wingers
| complaining about tolerance of Muslims, but given that a
| lot of people really far out on the right actually want to
| tear down Western institutions, it seems more like them
| making a smug grin[0] and saying "You like theocracy, don't
| you Mr. Liberal?" nowadays.
|
| [0] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BpwDP3IIEAAV9pK.jpg
| PathOfEclipse wrote:
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| It's a euro-centric term. The West of Europe has a
| historical bias towards freedom of expression, democracy,
| religious freedom (arguable) etc, and that got extended to
| include America when it got big enough to join the party.
|
| The East of Europe, by comparison, tended to
| authoritarianism, and that extended to include China when
| it got big enough to join the party.
|
| Of course, it depends on where you draw the line on East vs
| West - Germany could be either, or both, and historically
| has been all flavours of political spectrum.
|
| As others have said, it makes no sense from an American
| viewpoint because geography.
|
| The christian evangelic movement is very authoritarian,
| which makes them Eastern. Christianity (or professed
| christianity) doesn't automatically make them Western.
| kgarten wrote:
| >the west of Europe has a historical bias towards freedom
| of expression etc
|
| what?? since when ... ? Spain (franco, Spanish
| Inquisition)? France (Robespierre, Napoleon)? Germany?
| Italy(Mousolini)? ...
|
| most countries are now leaning towards freedom od
| expression, yet freedom of sppech is much more restricted
| compared to the US (and other countries) for example ...
| the term western does not make sense at all in this
| context.
|
| I sounds to me similar to "Judeo Christian values"
| something made up to exclude people.
| PathOfEclipse wrote:
| The French Revolution was decidedly atheist and leftwing.
| Most French thinkers of the time looked down on the
| American revolution and it's Christian values. The French
| revolution is more closely related to Marxism than what
| people generally refer to when they talk about Western
| roots.
|
| Similarly, Germany's Nazi party was highly anti-religious
| and anti Western values. Hitler said that, after the
| Jews, the Christians would be next on the chopping block.
| The Nazi party explicitly sought out to destroy the
| Christian values of universal human dignity and the
| responsibility to care for the poor and needy.
|
| The fascist movement similarly rejected Christian Western
| roots. Giovanni Gentile, father of fascism, was decidedly
| atheist. His influence, H.W.F Hegel, was also a strong
| influence of Karl Marx.
|
| I don't know much about the history of the Spanish
| inquisition, but most of the examples you gave were of
| people in the west who were actively _rejecting_ Western
| tradition. Not coincidentally, they all came up with
| something far worse and far more evil. When you achieve a
| local maximum as great as we have, it 's virtually
| impossible to make any revolutionary change that is not
| catastrophic.
| sofixa wrote:
| > The West of Europe has a historical bias towards
| freedom of expression, democracy, religious freedom
| (arguable) etc, and that got extended to include America
| when it got big enough to join the party
|
| You're going to have to be more precise with the epoch
| you think that happened, but it doesn't sound true.
| Whenever you consider the US "got big enough to join the
| party" (the absolute latest I would accept is WWI),
| democracy was a rare thing. Name one "Western" country
| that was democratic, really, for more than 40 years
| during WWI. The closest you can get to are a few
| constitutional monarchies with at least lots of _de jure_
| , usually also _de facto_ monarch power, Switzerland and
| San Marino.
| golemotron wrote:
| > What does this mean and how is it relevant to the article
| or the parent comment?
|
| Freedom of speech does not exist outside the Western
| tradition.
| whitepaint wrote:
| > What does this mean and how is it relevant to the article
| or the parent comment?
|
| It is very relevant. Freedom of speech is one of
| cornerstones of the West.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| Galileo will be pleased to hear it. As will Socrates.
| kube-system wrote:
| The reason you know those things about those people is
| because your teachers (and their teachers) thought those
| mistakes were worth learning from.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| My dude, as recently as 1921, England was imprisoning
| people for blasphemy[1], and the law was on the books
| until 2008. Throughout the history of Christendom, the
| usual punishment for blasphemy was death by hanging or
| stoning, and such hangings were common up until the turn
| of the 18th century[2]. "The West" is nothing special
| when it comes to freedom of speech.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blasphemy_law_in_the_U
| nited_Ki...
|
| [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blasphemy#Punishment
| kube-system wrote:
| There are places where death sentences for blasphemy are
| enforced today. This doesn't happen anywhere in the west.
|
| While not all of the western world is as liberal about
| speech as the US is, when you consider both political and
| religious speech, the western world is squarely more
| progressive than other regions of the world.
| sfjailbird wrote:
| > There are places where death sentences for blasphemy
| are enforced today.
|
| And many warmly supported by 'the West', funny how that
| works.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| Today? Yeah, it is. But the previous claim was that
| freedom of speech was some kind of essential, enduring
| feature of "the west". But Europe's (and its colonies')
| history in that regard is actually a patchwork of freedom
| and oppression -- but mostly oppression, much like the
| rest of the world. Europe's trend over the past couple of
| hundred years has been good regarding political and
| religious speech, but I wouldn't base any sweeping
| conclusions about long-term cultural differences on that.
| Nomentatus wrote:
| The current Pope strongly supports the return of
| blasphemy laws, and not just re Christian beliefs,
| apparently.
| sofixa wrote:
| Good question, by what measure is Ancient Greece
| "Western"?
| wombatpm wrote:
| It's not China or the Indus River valley?
| sofixa wrote:
| By that logic Albania, Bosnia, Libya, Chad are also
| "Western"?
| cronin101 wrote:
| With the US thrust into the de-facto "centre of the Anglo-
| sphere" (note: I am not American, as astute readers might
| deduce from preceding spelling), many terms are in need of
| an overhaul. It's particularly amusing how news of the
| "West" comes from the East and the "East" is accessed by
| flying West.
|
| Words are hard (and currently under a lot of scrutiny). Has
| anyone tried turning the language off and on again?
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Words like this always end up being wrong if they're used
| long enough, but are still useful and everyone gets what
| you mean, so they're fine, since that's the whole point.
| See also: "3rd world".
| mmcdermott wrote:
| > Has anyone tried turning the language off and on again?
|
| Wouldn't do any good. The English language has a
| venerable codebase, a high turnover development team and
| lava flow development all over the place.
|
| Modernization attempts haven't gone well, but more PRs
| come in by the day.
| cestith wrote:
| At the end of the day, English is less a language in the
| sense of other languages and more a pluggable framework
| an empire developed for adopting the vocabulary of other
| peoples and stuffing them into a loose sort of syntax
| together.
| Steltek wrote:
| I often think of "Worse is better" when teaching my kids
| reading and writing. In fact, Internet memes in the past
| 2 decades have dialed this up to 11.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worse_is_better
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| You don't even have to go back that far. Spain was a
| dictatorship in the early '70s.
| cycomanic wrote:
| And the US became significant supporters of Franco in
| later years.
| api wrote:
| That was the "if it's not communist and fogs glass we
| support it" era of US foreign policy.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| "Was"? Although now I guess it applies to geopolitical
| rivals, whether communist or not.
| shagie wrote:
| Gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/04/us/the-onion-
| supreme-cour...
| O__________O wrote:
| Related explanation of a NYT's gift link:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33082253
| mmastrac wrote:
| This is honestly a beautiful piece of work, and will likely be a
| popular read for law students for decades to come. This is just
| from the first part:
|
| > The Onion is the world's leading news publication, offering
| highly acclaimed, universally revered cover- age of breaking
| national, international, and local news events. Rising from its
| humble beginnings as a print newspaper in 1756, The Onion now
| enjoys a daily read- ership of 4.3 trillion and has grown into
| the single most powerful and influential organization in human
| his- tory.
|
| > In addition to maintaining a towering standard of excellence to
| which the rest of the industry aspires, The Onion supports more
| than 350,000 full- and part- time journalism jobs in its numerous
| news bureaus and manual labor camps stationed around the world,
| and members of its editorial board have served with distinction
| in an advisory capacity for such nations as China, Syria,
| Somalia, and the former Soviet Union. On top of its journalistic
| pursuits, The Onion also owns and operates the majority of the
| world's transoceanic shipping lanes, stands on the nation's
| leading edge on matters of deforestation and strip mining, and
| proudly conducts tests on millions of animals daily.
|
| > The Onion's keen, fact-driven reportage has been cited
| favorably by one or more local courts, as well as Iran and the
| Chinese state-run media. Along the way, The Onion's journalists
| have garnered a sterling reputation for accurately forecasting
| future events. One such coup was The Onion's scoop revealing that
| a for- mer president kept nuclear secrets strewn around his beach
| home's basement three years before it even hap- pened.
| moffkalast wrote:
| The Soviet Onion
| dralley wrote:
| > The Onion's journalists have garnered a sterling reputation
| for accurately forecasting future events.
|
| No one can forget this gem
|
| https://www.theonion.com/bush-our-long-national-nightmare-of...
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| The conclusion is straight up poetry:
|
| > The Onion intends to continue its socially valuable role
| bringing the disinfectant of sunlight into the halls of power.
| And it would vastly prefer that sunlight not to be measured out
| to its writers in 15- minute increments in an exercise yard.
| Pxtl wrote:
| Even setting aside the particulars of the case, it seems obvious
| to me that local police forces should be required to have
| conflict-of-interest rules regarding their own critics, and
| should be deferring to an alternate police force in such cases,
| especially in the USA where you have many overlapping police
| forces available such as the State and FBI.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| Sure. Police misconduct should be primarily investigated by
| anybody but that police department, and prosecution decisions
| should be made by anybody other than the prosecutors that
| police department regularly partners with. Congress shouldn't
| investigate its own ethics violations.
|
| Same with all government things, really. I think we really need
| some sort of "executive integrity" department whose sole
| mandate is investigating and prosecuting people generally
| considered out of reach of the justice system. Judges,
| legislators, attorneys general, etc.
| LocalH wrote:
| And then we wrap it around. That "executive integrity"
| department operates _completely transparently_. Otherwise it
| will just become a new power target.
| zach_garwood wrote:
| The "conflict of interest rule" you speak of is the First
| Amendment. It's been around for a while.
| Pxtl wrote:
| No, the 1st amendment just says that the cops can't arrest
| you for speech... unless that speech is threats, fraud, etc.
| The 1st amendment doesn't say the cops can't punitively
| arrest you because they don't like your statements if they
| can find some other justification for it, regardless of the
| conflict of interest. Police have discretion on enforcement.
| sponaugle wrote:
| "Police have discretion on enforcement." - That is perhaps
| one of the underlying problems. Many of the laws as written
| rely on 'discretion' to be functional. Nearly every driver
| in the US who has been driving more than a few weeks is a
| yet to be convicted multi-time felon.. by the very nature
| that the laws around driving only work when paired with
| sometimes arbitrary discretion. Imagine if you go over the
| speed limit even .1mph, which will happen to almost every
| car many hundreds or thousands of times per day, and you
| are sited for such. Consider rules like turn signals
| needing to be indicated 100 feet before a turn. 99.9 feet
| and you are violating the law and due a citation. Multiple
| citations and you should automatically have you license
| suspended. There is a never ending collection of officers
| saying that if they want to pull someone over, all they
| have to do is follow them due to it being impossible to
| drive with 100% legal compliance.
|
| Until we reduce that ability ( which is in the hands of our
| elected lawmakers), the movement of the 'discretion' just
| moves where the power target is.
| mgbmtl wrote:
| See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33076821 (20
| comments)
| gpm wrote:
| Also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33072030
|
| And the brief itself!
| https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-293/242292/2022...
| cabaalis wrote:
| From https://reason.com/2022/09/28/a-parodist-asks-scotus-to-
| let-... :
|
| > Eleven Facebook users called the police department's
| nonemergency line about Novak's spoof, which was the basis for
| the claim that he had disrupted police operations. When the case
| was presented to a grand jury, Detective Thomas Connor claimed
| the callers "honest to God believed" that Novak's creation was
| the department's official page. But when Novak sued Connor and
| six other officers, the Institute for Justice notes in its
| Supreme Court petition, "Connor admitted at deposition that none
| of the callers thought that."
|
| I'm pretty sure we all know why this person was arrested, and
| that there is only one way the court should rule.
| jkestner wrote:
| Unfortunately, this case isn't about whether the police did
| something wrong, but about the principle of qualified immunity
| that the Supreme Court created, and has now become de facto
| law. The best outcome we're likely to get is that the court
| will rule that the police department's actions do not fall
| under qualified immunity, and the city's taxpayers will pay for
| the damages awarded.
| Spoom wrote:
| And the worst outcome is that parody is no longer protected
| under the First Amendment unless it is explicitly disclaimed.
| I fear that we may see that ruling come through.
| gopher_space wrote:
| We will just end up with another popup you'll dismiss
| without reading. I love how easy it is to shift legal and
| moral burdens these days.
|
| /s
| not2b wrote:
| Doubt it. As bad as the current court is, some of the
| conservative members take the First Amendment seriously
| (Gorsuch, Roberts) so I think the parodist will win.
| jacobr1 wrote:
| And even the others who might have different views on
| obscenity, still hold political special to be special.
| voxic11 wrote:
| If the officers actions don't fall under qualified immunity
| then he can be sued personally and would be responsible for
| paying any damages awarded. The taxpayers might elect to
| cover the officers damages but they are generally not
| required to by state or federal law. There are some
| exceptions to this like New Mexico which abolished qualified
| immunity but at the same time required that the employer of
| the police cover any damages resulting from cases where the
| officer would have previously been covered by qualified
| immunity.
| matthewmcg wrote:
| Even if indemnification is not required by law, it's
| frequently written into the terms of many employment
| contracts and collective bargaining agreements. A recent
| study [1] using public records requests found that
| virtually all officers are indemnified, meaning they don't
| have to personally satisfy a judgement against them.
|
| [1] https://www.nyulawreview.org/issues/volume-89-number-3/
| polic...
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I'm actually fine with indemnification because it creates
| an incentive for departments to not employ cops that are
| going to get them sued.
| int_19h wrote:
| It also creates an incentive for departments to cover up
| for cops who do something they shouldn't have done.
| [deleted]
| msbarnett wrote:
| This might be true if the lawsuit damages were paid out
| of police budgets, but in many instances this isn't the
| case - the lawsuits are paid out of a combination of
| municipal liability insurance claims and the general city
| budget, eg) https://abcnews.go.com/US/millions-lawsuit-
| settlements-hidde... or
| https://www.npr.org/2020/09/19/914170214/police-
| settlements-...
|
| There's a broad disconnect between the police
| departments, their hiring and disciplinary practices, and
| the consequences of the lawsuits their actions generate.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Tax revenue is fungible, it does not make a difference
| which budget it comes from. The city's residents are
| still going to have the same expectation of police
| services. It has to be individual police that are liable.
| msbarnett wrote:
| The _overall_ fungibility of tax revenue is irrelevant to
| the criticism of the perverse incentives at play here.
|
| Tying the payouts _specifically_ to the police budget
| would mean that when the city 's residents' policing
| service expectations failed to be met, one could point to
| that being a direct consequence of police actions costing
| them their own policing budget, increasing pressure on
| the public to do things like elect effective police
| oversight commissioners who will act to reign in their
| abuses and provide good value-for-cost policing.
|
| The status quo instead disconnects the oversight from the
| consequences, leading to the quiet defunding of other
| services for political reasons (since it would require
| city counsels to constantly vote to cut police budgets in
| proportion to each damage award, rather than happening
| "neutrally" by centering the legal defense and payouts
| within the police budget to begin with).
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Tying the payouts specifically to the police budget
| would mean that when the city's residents' policing
| service expectations failed to be met, one could point to
| that being a direct consequence of police actions costing
| them their own policing budget, increasing pressure on
| the public to do things like elect effective police
| oversight commissioners who will act to reign in their
| abuses and provide good value-for-cost policing.
|
| This is a very tall order that I predict would not come
| true. It is already very easy to see how much police
| misconduct costs a city's tax base, but push come to
| shove, most people will think they are isolated cases and
| will not happen to them.
|
| > The status quo instead disconnects the oversight from
| the consequences, leading to the quiet defunding of other
| services for political reasons
|
| This political reason is that voting in local elections
| is not common. 100% of the police and their allies will
| be voting, while most others will be spending their
| evenings on things other than paying attention to local
| politics.
|
| There are a few exceptions, but overall, I would not
| expect voters to react to feeling the pain of reduced
| police budgets with "let's dig into why police budgets
| are getting smaller". By and large, they will simply vote
| for the politician that provides the simplest message,
| which is the incumbents are refusing to properly fund the
| police department, and if you vote for me, I will
| properly fund it.
|
| The only solution I see is holding individual cops
| accountable, including for criminal charges like perjury
| for lying such as the detective in this case clearly did.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I have a friend who is a cop, and when testifying in a
| use of force case, he was pressured by his superiors to
| express his opinions in a way that would minimize
| liability for the department, so at least anecdotally
| they care about lawsuits.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| They care enough to lie and manipulate where it is
| trivial to do so that isn't a high standard.
| stonogo wrote:
| Your point is irrelevant as Novak is suing the city, not
| any individual officer. This has nothing to do with
| qualified immunity.
|
| Edit: the above is wrong, and I apologize. I got all hopped
| up thinking of the wrong case.
| msbarnett wrote:
| Completely wrong. The 6th circuit's affirmation of the
| lower court's summary judgement was entirely based on the
| officers' entitlement to qualified immunity. Read the
| opinion yourself:
| https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-
| courts/ca6/18... . That's the particular dispute that's
| heading to the Supreme Court. The municipal liability is
| unrelated to this amicus brief, which is entirely about
| the QI dispute.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| He is suing the individual officers:
|
| https://reason.com/2022/09/28/a-parodist-asks-scotus-to-
| let-...
|
| >After a jury unanimously acquitted Novak of that felony,
| he sued seven officers for violating his First Amendment
| rights.
|
| >But this year the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th
| Circuit concluded that the officers he sued were
| protected by qualified immunity, which shields police
| from liability for violating constitutional rights unless
| their alleged misconduct ran afoul of "clearly
| established" law.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Qualified immunity is the concept that an individual acting
| for the state in certain roles may not be directly pursued
| for damages save for certain egregious circumstances. It is
| not now nor has it ever been a shield protecting the local
| government as a whole from being found liable as it routinely
| is. It is likely a non-issue in this case where the issue at
| hand is that the government violated this individuals rights
| and the benefit to society would be a ruling that they
| clearly aren't allowed to do so in the future.
| not2b wrote:
| No, that's a separate question. Qualified immunity is about
| whether the cops can be punished for their misconduct, but
| what is being appealed is a crazy court decision that
| basically says satire and parody isn't protected speech
| unless is basically says "THIS IS SATIRE" at the very
| beginning.
|
| Often courts rule that a search was invalid or a conviction
| is tossed out, but almost never are the cops punished for the
| invalid search or arrest.
| SamBam wrote:
| I'm clearly just an idiot, but I thought that qualified
| immunity was to protect officials from liability while they
| are performing their duties in a reasonable manner, in the
| heat of the moment.
|
| I fail to see why it should protect the police from engaging
| in cold, calculated retribution of perceived enemies.
| btown wrote:
| I mean, this is how it _should_ work morally, and arguably
| how the law was _designed_ to work.
|
| But it has since been _interpreted_ as this: even if it is
| clear to _all_ parties that the duties were _not_ performed
| in a reasonable manner, qualified immunity applies unless
| the case fits the _exact_ pattern of a prior case that held
| officials accountable.
|
| How exact must the match of circumstances be?
| https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/qualified-immunity-
| lega... (note: opinions in this article and by this
| organization are not mine) has examples:
|
| > A prior Sixth Circuit case had already held that an
| officer clearly violated the Fourth Amendment when he used
| a police dog without warning against an unarmed residential
| burglary suspect who was lying on the ground with his hands
| at his sides.42 But the court here held that this prior
| case was insufficient because "Baxter does not point us to
| any case law suggesting that raising his hands, on its own,
| is enough to put Harris on notice that a canine
| apprehension was unlawful in these circumstances."43 In
| other words, prior case law holding it unlawful to deploy
| police dogs against nonthreatening suspects who surrendered
| by laying on the ground did not make it clear that it was
| unlawful to deploy police dogs against nonthreatening
| suspects who surrendered by sitting on the ground with
| their hands up.
|
| > Nevertheless, in spite of this objectively unreasonable
| shooting, a majority of the Sixth Circuit panel found that
| the officer was entitled to qualified immunity. The court
| itself acknowledged that several prior cases had clearly
| established that "shooting a driver while positioned to the
| side of his fleeing car violates the Fourth Amendment,
| absent some indication suggesting that the driver poses
| more than a fleeting threat."46 Even though that statement
| would seem to govern this case exactly, the majority held
| that these prior cases were "distinguishable" because they
| "involved officers confronting a car in a parking lot and
| shooting the non- violent driver as he attempted to
| initiate flight," whereas here "Phillips shot Latits after
| Latits led three police officers on a car chase for several
| minutes."47 The lone dissenting judge in this case dryly
| observed that "the degree of factual similarity that the
| majority's approach requires is probably impossible for any
| plaintiff to meet."48
|
| To make an analogy to our industry, it's like the famous
| Reflections on Trusting Trust compiler paper here: https://
| www.cs.cmu.edu/~rdriley/487/papers/Thompson_1984_Ref... -
| if your compiler is compromised to the extent that even
| when compiling a compiler, it inserts the same exact
| compromise in the newly compiled compiler... then there's
| no turning back.
|
| And here we have a concept of qualified immunity that
| cannot ever be given nuance, because it's impossible to
| adjudicate based on a no-longer-existing version of the
| case law that allows nuance to be added to the concept of
| qualified immunity. It's, quite literally, a cancer from
| any logical perspective. We should be ashamed as a society
| to have allowed such a system to exist. Only new national
| legislation, to my knowledge, can stop the rot, and that
| will come far too late for many who have suffered at the
| hands of law enforcement officials.
|
| (IANAL, this is not legal advice)
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| Because cops are above the law. And, as both major
| political parties compete to be perceived as more pro-
| police than the other, no one in power will do anything to
| change that.
| js2 wrote:
| > both major political parties compete to be perceived as
| more pro-police than the other
|
| You know that's not true. It's not the Democratic
| candidates that regularly trot out the Willie Horton ads.
| As I write this, Mehmet Oz is running ads against
| Fetterman for being soft on crime.
|
| https://whyy.org/articles/election-2022-pennsylvania-
| senate-...
|
| The police reform bill was the work of the Democrats:
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/08/politics/democrats-police-
| leg...
|
| The party position:
|
| https://democrats.org/where-we-stand/party-
| platform/protecti...
|
| Go ahead, show me the GOP position on policing.
| seti0Cha wrote:
| These cops are currently in court, being subjected to the
| law. If you read the judge's rulings, you can see that
| the opinions are not about the facts of the case but how
| the law applies to them. If they get the suit dismissed,
| it will have been done through legal means. So no, this
| isn't because the cops are above the law. The law may be
| constructed as to favor them unfairly, but that's an
| entirely other matter.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| If a court ignores the plain meaning of the law to
| dismiss a suit against the police, then the police are
| above the law.
| seti0Cha wrote:
| The same court had ruled against them previously. If they
| just wanted to let them off, why didn't they do it then?
| It seems to me the most reasonable explanation is that
| they were interpreting the law (IANAL but badly it seems
| to me in the second case) not ignoring it. That may
| amount to the same to you but I think there's a huge
| difference in terms of how to remediate the situation. To
| me, the answer is to amend the law so that it does what
| we want rather than just make blanket claims that can't
| be acted on.
| ejb999 wrote:
| there are more than a few cops sitting in jail right now
| that would disagree with your blanket statement.
| vkou wrote:
| Our prisons would be empty if locking away the average
| convict took half the effort that was necessary to put
| them where they are.
| nkurz wrote:
| It took me several re-readings to conclude that "them"
| and "they" at the end of this sentence are referring to
| different people!
|
| I think what vkou is saying (and I agree) is that while
| there currently are some police in prison who have been
| convicted of crimes, the difficulty factor of convicting
| a police officer is much higher than the difficulty of
| convicting a normal person. If the same higher standard
| for obtaining a conviction was applied to everyone else,
| hardly anyone would be sent to prison.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| I can't tell -- did you interpret my comment as "not a
| single police officer, without exception, suffers any
| sort of legal punishment for their actions," or are you
| trying to tell me that it's common for cops to be held
| accountable when they break the law?
| seti0Cha wrote:
| Not OP but I think it probably is fairly common for them
| to be held accountable. I haven't seen any statistics on
| it, but I regard it is the most plausible case. You're
| claiming otherwise. What reason can you give for me to
| change my opinion?
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| Check out the Twitter account @placardabuse [1]. It
| documents endemic lawbreaking by the NYPD. When civilians
| report lawbreaking, virtually without fail, the
| complaints are ignored -- even when the violation is
| something the NYPD is ostensibly focusing on cracking
| down on, like "ghost cars". Anecdotally, the vast
| majority of traffic violations I see are by police, and I
| have never had a report that resulted in any sort of
| action.
|
| There's a baked in assumption I want to draw attention
| to, though. Why do you regard police accountability as
| the most plausible default?
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/placardabuse
| mox1 wrote:
| How many other professions in the world have a Wikipedia
| page for XYZ code of silence[1]?
|
| Further reading: https://aele.org/loscode2000.html
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_wall_of_silence
| seti0Cha wrote:
| This argument basically boils down to "if that were not
| the case, why would so many people say it was the case"?
| That's not a great way to decide important issues.
| Retric wrote:
| Cops talk about the blue all of silence not just regular
| people. It shows up in multiple court cases with cops
| lying to protect other cops up to and including perjury.
|
| To read the bias read up on the Jason Van Dyke case,
| first time in 50 years a Chicago cop convicted of murder
| after being caught on camera and he served 3 and 1/4
| years in prison. "The U.S. attorney's office confirmed on
| April 13, 2015,[57] that they had been conducting a
| federal criminal investigation of the McDonald case in
| conjunction with the state attorney's office, _after
| contradictions were found between the initial police
| report and the dash-cam video_ "
|
| Look, if you have zero counter evidence than any evidence
| to the contrary should be persuasive.
| seti0Cha wrote:
| Citing individual cases doesn't say anything about what
| is usual. And you're the one making a claim that cops
| usually are not held accountable. I'm not trying to
| convince you that they usually are, I'm just saying that
| that's what I believe and offering to let you convince
| me. So no, I don't have to provide any evidence. If you
| don't want to either fine. But then why are you replying?
|
| edit: looking at this again, I think I misread your
| point. You're claiming that unless I have evidence that
| shows that police are usually held accountable, then any
| evidence that they are not, even anecdotal, should
| convince me. I would say that's plainly not correct. If I
| know nothing about whether police are held accountable, a
| single case demonstrating one not being held accountable
| does not warrant assuming they usually are not. It only
| demonstrates that they are not always held accountable
| and tells me nothing about frequency. Drawing broad
| inferences from too little data is a pernicious problem
| in our society. That said, I can find plenty of anecdotes
| where cops were held accountable. How am I to know which
| is more typical?
| Retric wrote:
| It's often overblown but Bayesian statistics shows you
| should ideally update your mental model with every single
| piece of new information.
|
| It's unrealistic to actually carry that out in every
| case, but in cases where you have zero evidence updating
| your views based on the first bit of evidence you receive
| is absolutely the correct choice. The degree to which any
| single piece of evidence should change your mindset is of
| course minimal, but holding a view with zero supporting
| evidence in the face of multiple pieces of counter
| evidence is a sign of insanity.
| seti0Cha wrote:
| Well I did minimally adjust my priors based on that
| evidence actually. The fact that a lot of people are
| making claims here also adjusts them very slightly (I
| already knew many people felt this way). But I've got
| heavy weighting on policy matters needing non-anecdotal
| data, so not much of a change really.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| what would cause you to think that they were not held
| accountable? you mention statistics, what statistics
| would be of interest to you in this matter?
| seti0Cha wrote:
| I mention statistics but I didn't say I required seeing
| statistics to be convinced. I'm not sure what kind of
| argument or evidence would convince me, but I promise
| you, if you give me reasons, I'll evaluate them with as
| open a mind as I am able. What convinced you?
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| the various statistics that have already been brought out
| in the various sub-posts to your original post.
|
| there seem to be a large number of complaints against
| police officers in the U.S.
|
| very few of these actually go to an indictment.
|
| of these ones that go to an indictment it seems fewer get
| heavy sentences in comparison to the rest of the
| population for similar infractions.
|
| all of this seems to make the police a statistical
| anomaly in comparison to other people accused of criminal
| conduct.
|
| Occam's razor would suggest that the reason that police
| do better than other people in not being indicted, not
| being convicted, and receiving lesser sentences is
| because they are police.
| seti0Cha wrote:
| > the various statistics that have already been brought
| out in the various sub-posts to your original post.
|
| Have there? I haven't seen them. Best I've seen is a
| study suggesting that killings by police may be
| undercounted due to mistakes in reporting, but doesn't
| make any claims that these represent crimes committed by
| police.
|
| > there seem to be a large number of complaints against
| police officers in the U.S.
|
| Google tells me there are 900,000 cops in the US. That's
| a large number too. What's the complaint/cop ratio?
|
| > very few of these actually go to an indictment
|
| How many fewer than we'd expect? What's the normal
| indictment rate? What should it be?
|
| > of these ones that go to an indictment it seems fewer
| get heavy sentences in comparison to the rest of the
| population for similar infractions.
|
| Again, how many fewer? These are all things I would
| expect could be demonstrated empirically. What are the
| actual numbers? It seems like people are mostly going by
| their gut feeling, which I just don't find convincing.
| pessimizer wrote:
| We're on the internet. When people are interested in
| statistics, they search for them, then tell you the ones
| they couldn't find that might change their opinion. When
| they're interested in arguing, they tell you that it's
| "most plausible" that they're right although they haven't
| seen any statistics, and ask you to convince them
| otherwise.
| seti0Cha wrote:
| As it happens though, I did search for statistics on this
| and found none. Granted, I didn't spend a lot of time on
| it. However, given the large number of people who feel
| passionately that they know the state of things here, I
| don't think it was unreasonable to ask them how they came
| to that conclusion. How about you? Do you have anything
| useful to say?
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| According to the organization Mapping Police Violence,
| police have killed 390 people in the untied states thus
| far. 13 have been charged with any crime. Maybe police
| are just like over 95% justified when they kill people,
| but I kind of doubt it.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| How many of the killings were unjustified? We can't
| actually gain anything of meaning from your post without
| that detail.
| jandrese wrote:
| It's difficult to impossible to know because the police
| will just investigate themselves and declare that there
| was no wrongdoing. Typically the media has to get
| involved for the officers to be under any real danger of
| prosecution.
| seti0Cha wrote:
| Why? Is it not the case that they are charged with
| apprehending armed and dangerous people who may try to
| kill them? Wouldn't you expect that that would sometimes
| result in the person they are confronting being killed?
| How many times did they confront armed dangerous people
| in total? How many times were they killed by the armed
| dangerous people? Those two numbers alone don't give
| nearly enough information to draw any conclusions.
| xapata wrote:
| > fairly common
|
| It is possible that police are both "commonly" held
| accountable, yet not "often enough" for the good of
| society. Devil is in the details.
| seti0Cha wrote:
| In fact, I think "not often enough" is most likely the
| case. It may seem pedantic to others, but I think there's
| a huge difference between this claim and that made by OP.
| One suggests a problem of deficient enforcement, the
| other asserts that something is fundamentally wrong with
| our society and its legal system. The first can be
| addressed through improvement to law, the second suggest
| much more radical change is necessary. Saying it's the
| problem is the second when it's actually the first
| actually hinders effective change.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Changing the law can't change the principle of qualified
| immunity, unless you ammend the constitution. And, as
| others have pointed out, qualified immunity has been used
| to save a police office that loosed violent dogs on a
| suspect sitting on the ground with their hands up,
| because while there was established precedent that
| loosing violent dogs on suspects laying on the ground is
| illegal, this had not yet been tested in court for
| suspects sitting on the ground with their hands up, so
| how could the officer had known that the court would look
| down on such a thing?
|
| If this decision doesn't show there is something deeply,
| fundamentally, disgustingly wrong with your legal system,
| I don't think anything else can show that.
| seti0Cha wrote:
| I hadn't heard that claim before. It doesn't seem to be
| correct: https://www.ncsl.org/research/civil-and-
| criminal-justice/qua....
|
| It seems to me like in fact governments are working to
| improve the law in that area.
| jkestner wrote:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/30/us/police-killings-
| underc... Or direct to the data, if that's what you want:
| https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS014
| 0-6...
| seti0Cha wrote:
| That study finds that many times the coroner's report is
| filled out such that the death is not properly classified
| as being due to the police so the number of deaths caused
| by the police may be twice what is reported. The
| strongest interpretation I can make of this is that if
| all those misreportings were coverups for murder, then
| the police would be being held accountable for less than
| half of the people they killed. However, the study
| indicates that the problem is largely due to untrained
| coroners and complex reporting procedures, which doesn't
| suggest a massive coverup, and I don't think we can
| assume they all represent murders the police got away
| with. It doesn't really say anything about how many
| unjustified deaths occurred vs. how many were justified,
| and it's specific to deaths as opposed to harassment or
| corruption or what have you, so I can't say it really
| convinces me that police are generally not held
| accountable for their actions.
| nyuszika7h wrote:
| Yes, it's fairly common for them to be held accountable
| if the victim is white.
| somat wrote:
| "Because cops are above the law"
|
| Yes, that is what makes them cops, the police are
| authorized to do many things that are illegal for us
| ordinary citizens. they can restrain people, go through
| stop lights, speed, threaten, sometimes even kill.
|
| We as society recognize that these things are in general
| bad to do, however there are special cases where it is
| needed. so we authorize some people to professionally
| break the law where needed.
|
| That being said, the quote "Who watches the watchmen?" is
| as always very relevant and those authorized to break the
| law need to be held to a very high moral standard.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > he police are authorized to do many things that are
| illegal for us ordinary citizens. they can restrain
| people, go through stop lights, speed, threaten,
| sometimes even kill.
|
| But not whenever they want. When needed. You could do any
| of those things legally in most states. The first to
| prevent a suicidal person from killing themselves, the
| next two when driving a serious case to the ER, the last
| two when defending yourself from an armed home intruder.
| Phrodo_00 wrote:
| Police should not be _above_ the law. It's reasonable
| that they have more attributions to be able to do their
| jobs, but those should be very well established within
| the law. The problem is that qualified immunity seems to
| have actually put them in a position where they can
| ignore the law.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| There's a difference between being given special powers
| and being above the law. Special powers are exceptional
| privileges that are limited in scope. Being "above the
| law" means you're exceeding even those privileges, but no
| one will hold you accountable.
|
| Let's take your red light example. Cops are allowed to go
| through red lights when they're responding to an
| emergency and they've put on their lights/sirens. That's
| a reasonable special power. In practice, what I see
| happening is either (a) police briefly turn on their
| lights/sirens as they cross the intersection, then
| immediately turn them off, or (b) police simply run the
| red light.
| P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote:
| That's a reasonable expectation for what qualified immunity
| is.
|
| But then there's the reality, which is that it's been
| abused via a "chicken and egg" problem.
|
| It's called "piercing the veil of qualified immunity" and
| the standard for doing so is "currently established law".
| IOW, if it's not been pierced in the past for exactly (and
| I mean exactly) the same thing, then the default is that
| qualified immunity applies.
|
| What ends up happening is that even if the broad strokes
| are exactly the same, they'll claim there is no currently
| established law if some of the minutia of the details is
| different. The police officer kicked the pregnant woman in
| the face instead of the stomach.
|
| The effect is that qualified immunity stopped being
| reasonable.
|
| ---
|
| If I may, I suspect most reasonable people understand that
| qualified immunity is there because police officers are
| human and mistakes happen. But it's been abused, and as
| such it needs to be reformed.
|
| ---
|
| editing this in as a perfect example of what I mean about
| courts using specificity to effectively make it impossible
| to pierce the veil of qualified immunity.
|
| Many thanks to btown for the link, I went looking for
| something similar and was unable to find it.
|
| https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/qualified-immunity-
| lega...
|
| > In other words, prior case law holding it unlawful to
| deploy police dogs against nonthreatening suspects who
| surrendered by laying on the ground did not make it clear
| that it was unlawful to deploy police dogs against
| nonthreatening suspects who surrendered by sitting on the
| ground with their hands up.
| karmelapple wrote:
| I hope Congress could pass a law ending qualified
| immunity.
|
| If you do, too, contact your US House legislators about
| HR 1470 and your desire to end qualified immunity:
| https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-
| bill/1470
| Phrodo_00 wrote:
| > if it's not been pierced in the past for exactly (and I
| mean exactly) the same thing, then the default is that
| qualified immunity applies
|
| I've heard this before, but I don't completely get it.
| Can someone explain it in more detail? Does this mean the
| only thing that can pierce the veil are rulings from
| before qualified immunity was put in place? What about
| new laws or constitutional amendments?
| nzealand wrote:
| Qualified Immunity is US case law precedent, which means
| the courts basically are applying existing laws to novel
| situations to make new laws (Harlow v. Fitzgerald.)
|
| Initially, courts ruled that the police lost qualified
| immunity if they performed an action that they knew
| violated peoples rights (Malley v. Briggs)
|
| Lately, courts have basically said "how could the
| government know it was a violation of this guys rights?
| Sure, there is a very similar case which said you can't
| violate this right, but the details are slightly
| different, so how could they know the persons rights were
| protected in this specific case? Case dismissed." (Zadeh
| v. Robinson)
|
| It's absurd, not just because the details are always
| different, but because the initial case law was set
| without any similar precedent. It basically takes a
| particularly egregious violation of your rights to
| overcome the qualified part of qualified immunity and sue
| the government (Taylor v. Riojas)
|
| (Not a lawyer, but married to one.)
| [deleted]
| sbuttgereit wrote:
| When I see these things, I always try to take the opportunity
| to plug the Institute for Justice (https://ij.org/). They do
| outstanding work and I've always been satisfied with how my
| contributions have been put to use.
| jkestner wrote:
| I'm generally very happy with their use of my contributions
| as well, with the exception of advocating the Supreme Court
| to require Maine to fund vouchers to private religious
| schools.
| [deleted]
| tyre wrote:
| Is the detective being charged with lying to a grand jury?
| cb321 wrote:
| I think that is a very good question. I know that is a
| plaintiff/Novak claim, but I don't know its supporting
| evidence.
|
| The detective's legal vulnerability may rely on the
| transcript of his exact testimony both to the grand jury and
| at trial.
|
| It could be that, at the grand jury, he almost defined parody
| in two parts - with one part easily quoted out of context.
| "Oh, erm, what I meant was the complainers said ' _at first_
| I thought it was honest to god real ' and then 'I _figured
| out_ it was a parody '".
|
| It could also be the detective only mentioned the first part
| (people being confused) at the grand jury and the full story
| _only_ at trial which is more sketchy /makes him more legally
| vulnerable (but IANAL).
| jandrese wrote:
| No chance. If the police aren't allowed to lie to the jury
| their conviction numbers would suffer, which makes the police
| department look bad.
| cpif wrote:
| From the _Onion_ brief:
|
| > At bottom, parody functions by catering to a reasonable reader
| -- one who can tell (even after being tricked at first) that the
| parody is not real. If most readers of parody didn't live up to
| this robust standard, then there would be nothing funny about the
| Chinese government believing that a pudgy dictator like Kim Jong-
| un was the sexiest man on Earth. Everyone would just agree that
| it was perfectly reasonable for them to be taken in by the
| headline.
|
| > The law turns on the same reasonable-person construct. The
| reasonable-reader test gauges whether a statement can reasonably
| be interpreted as stating actual facts, thereby ensuring that
| neither the least humorous nor the most credulous audience
| dictates the boundaries of protected speech.... see also _Golb v.
| Att 'y Gen. of N.Y._, 870 F.3d 89, 102 (2d Cir. 2017) ("[A]
| parody enjoys First Amendment protection notwithstanding that not
| everybody will get the joke.")
|
| I'm curious whether drawing any degree of public attention to the
| "reasonable-reader construct" will result in more nuanced
| discussion of misinformation/"fake news" than we normally get (in
| America).
|
| The assumption seems often to be that the reader is always most
| likely an _unreasonable_ reader, and that the solution to the
| problem is to accommodate every information stream to
| unreasonable reading habits, rather than intervening in the
| problem of widespread credulity (if that is indeed the problem)
| itself.
| cb321 wrote:
| A few background links that I dug up after reading the NYT
| article and the actual (hilarious!) Onion amicus brief linked to
| by @zerovox [1] that may be of broader interest given the ongoing
| discussion here:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity
| https://www.cleveland.com/court-
| justice/2017/10/man_arrested_for_creating_fake.html
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33081046
| Stagnant wrote:
| There really is no excuse for holding people in jail for longer
| than a day for cases like this, where no violence or big monetary
| fraud is involved. If the police truly thought that a crime had
| happened, the appropriate response would have been to call the
| guy in for questioning and let him go after that. Four days in a
| jail cell is pretty fucked up.
| bedast wrote:
| It's a plain and clear violation of his first amendment
| protections of free speech. There's no excuse for holding
| people in jail for any period of time for this. Even being
| detained for a short period of time is a civil rights
| violation.
| standardUser wrote:
| No person should be detained or held _at all_ unless there 's
| reason to believe they will engage in imminent violence or
| other major crimes.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Interesting that they decided to sprinkle some comedy into their
| brief. I guess that's on brand, hopefully it doesn't hurt them.
| marnett wrote:
| My understanding was it was mostly a satire of the often long
| winded and illegible legalese that is often on Supreme Court
| briefs. The section with random Latin phrases has me in
| stitches.
| [deleted]
| andsoitis wrote:
| Are the Supreme Court justices _required_ to read the entire
| brief, or can they stop reading after the first few sentences?
|
| https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-293/242292/2022...
| zuminator wrote:
| Justices aren't required to do anything. They make up their own
| rules and can do whatever they want.
| zerovox wrote:
| Link to the brief:
| https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-293/242292/2022...
| [deleted]
| JieJie wrote:
| I've copied a few bits from this and included some clippings as
| context from The Onion's first year in 1988. Surprisingly, this
| is (more-or-less) historically accurate.
|
| https://twitter.com/ZipBangWow/status/1577326165370769408
| Spoom wrote:
| Highly recommend reading the brief. It's actually pretty
| hilarious.
| metalliqaz wrote:
| > "The Onion's journalists have garnered a sterling
| reputation for accurately forecasting future events. One such
| coup was The Onion's scoop revealing that a former president
| kept nuclear secrets strewn around his beach home's basement
| three years before it even happened.[2]"
|
| > [2] See Mar-a-Lago Assistant Manager Wondering if Anyone
| Coming to Collect Nuclear Briefcase from Lost and Found, The
| Onion, Mar. 27, 2017, https://bit.ly/3S40xiP.
|
| Incredible
| consumer451 wrote:
| > _Tu stultus es._ You are dumb. These three Latin words
| have been The Onion's motto and guiding light since it was
| founded in 1988 as America's Finest News Source, leading
| its writers toward the paper's singular purpose of pointing
| out that its readers are deeply gullible people.
|
| > The Onion's motto is central to this brief for two
| important reasons. First, it's Latin. And The Onion knows
| that the federal judiciary is staffed entirely by total
| Latin dorks: They quote Catullus in the original Latin in
| chambers.
|
| > They sweetly whisper "stare decisis" into their spouses'
| ears. They mutter "cui bono" under their breath while
| picking up after their neighbors' dogs. So The Onion knew
| that, unless it pointed to a suitably Latin rallying cry,
| its brief would be operating far outside the Court's
| vernacular.
|
| Sum mortuus.
| tremon wrote:
| I just love that the brief's core argument is summarized in the
| table of contents, under ARGUMENT.
| itsmemattchung wrote:
| > The Onion now enjoys a daily readership of 4.3 trillion and
| has grown into the single most powerful and influential
| organization in human history
|
| Love it. 4.3 trillion people..
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-10-04 23:01 UTC)