Police Don’t Deserve an Impenetrable Legal Shield

The doctrine might sound innocuous, however its penalties are sometimes unjust. In a 2017 determination, the U.S. Courtroom of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit discovered {that a} police officer who ran a suspect off the highway and shot him thrice, killing him, had acted unreasonably, violating each police procedures and the Fourth Modification. However the courtroom additionally discovered that the authorized system had not “clearly established,” by means of prior instances with sufficiently comparable reality patterns, that this misconduct infringed constitutional rights. (In case your conduct as an official is so outrageous that nothing prefer it has come to courtroom earlier than, you’ll get certified immunity.)