Clearly Established #14
Welcome to the 14th issue of Clearly Established, a somewhat weekly, slightly irreverent roundup of recent accountability decisions. The federal courts of appeals were a bit slow this week, but they still issued a few decisions of interest. Let’s dive in.
An appellate court reviewing a denial of qualified immunity ordinarily has to take the facts as the district court finds them. But Fifth Circuit doesn’t have time for such jurisdictional niceties, so it recasts an officer's “throwing” and “slamming” a plaintiff to the ground as a “slow descent”; a wrenching of a plaintiff’s handcuffed arms behind her back as a “lifting [of] her arms”; and a punch to the throat as “a relatively minimal amount of force to move [a plaintiff] out of the way.” So, of course, the officer gets qualified immunity.
In which a Fifth Circuit judge complains that a constitutional rule cannot possibly be clearly established if a court uses seven pages of analysis and a flow chart to explain it. In our experience, when it comes to legal analysis, seven pages is pretty trim. And visual aids could improve a great deal of legal writing. Thankfully, this “tl;dr” rule of qualified immunity is (for now, anyway) only in dissent.
If you get a warrant to search apartment 1S in 645 W 62nd Street, can you search apartment 1N in 643 W 62nd Street? No, says the Seventh Circuit, not even if you really meant to get a warrant for 1N in 643. And while we’re at it, you can’t just tell the judge there are drugs involved just because you have probable cause for guns and you think “drugs and guns go hand in hand.”
Florida man, on his way to jail, says he’s going to try to kill himself. In jail, he creates a noose and nearly tries to kill himself. (A fellow inmate talks him out of it.) Jail guards decide he’s just “trying to get attention” and refuse to put him in the suicide-precaution dorm. A few hours later, he creates another noose with a bedsheet and in fact kills himself. Eleventh Circuit: You saw the first noose. You even called it a “noose”! Might be you should’ve known he'd try to kill himself; no qualified immunity for you.
That’s it for this week. Please feel free to send this newsletter to any friends or family who might find it interesting. If you got this from a friend, you can sign up to receive future issues here.
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