From Reason: The Supreme Court Says You Can Sue Cops Who Frame You on False Charges
Police officers could frame people, file bogus charges, conjure evidence out of thin air—and, in most of the U.S., they would still be immune from facing any sort of civil accountability for that malicious prosecution. Until yesterday.
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Yesterday, the highest court in the country struck that requirement down, ruling that Thompson should indeed have a right to sue the officers at the center of his case. “A plaintiff such as Thompson must demonstrate, among other things, that he obtained a favorable termination of the underlying criminal prosecution,” wrote Justice Brett Kavanaugh for the U.S. Supreme Court. “We hold that a Fourth Amendment claim…for malicious prosecution does not require the plaintiff to show that the criminal prosecution ended with some affirmative indication of innocence.”
From THOMPSON v. CLARK ET AL.:
Held: To demonstrate a favorable termination of a criminal prosecution for purposes of the Fourth Amendment claim under §1983 for malicious prosecution, a plaintiff need not show that the criminal prosecution ended with some affirmative indication of innocence. A plaintiff need only show that his prosecution ended without a conviction.
Thompson has satisfied that requirement here.
Thompson v. Clark was decided 6-3. (Alito wrote the dissent, with Thomas and Gorsuch joining.)
Gonna have to see if I can parse the reasoning of the dissent.Report
Here’s the opener. The first paragraph made me miss Scalia.
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Not surprising that Alito can’t agree with that approach, given that he seems to have a problem with any action to hold police or prosecutors to account for bad behavior under color of law.Report
I honestly think his issue is he doesn’t see these things a bad behavior, but rather the price we pay for law and order. Its a fair tradeoff as far as he’s concerned.Report
Sure, he’s a judge, he’s perfectly insulated from the downside of the tradeoff.Report
He’s also a fairly well to do white man which further insulates him.Report
It used to be the rule in some circuits, including the one where I practice, that for a federal civil rights claim based on malicious prosecution, the prosecution must have terminated in a way favorable to the plaintiff. Everyone agrees that if you get convicted, you don’t have a malicious prosecution claim. But the issue was whether it was enough that it ended without a conviction, or did the termination of the prosecution have to be on grounds that at least suggested actual innocence? The circuits were divided and — unless you adopt the dissent’s view that you can’t bring such a claim at all — it had to be decided some way or other and the Supremes decided that any termination that effectively ended the case without possibility of a conviction later is good enough.
That’s one of those questions where it is more important that there be some definite answer rather than that there be any particular answer, so — meh.
The dissent, however, says the federal civil rights statute doesn’t permit actions based on malicious prosecution at all, and that all the many lower-court cases based on malicious prosecution are based on a misunderstanding of a Supreme Court case named Albright. And to be fair, Albright was a fractured decision where no view gathered majority support, so back to first principles. The logic, as best I understand it, is that the statute itself doesn’t create claims, which is true, so the source of the right you claim has been violated must be something else. There are two reasonable possibilities, the 4th Amendment and substantive due process.
It seems to be generally accepted that the source is the 4th Amendment rather than substantive due process. Why? Because, that’s why. Several Justices don’t like substantive due process, admittedly a silly name, and won’t root a claim in SDP if a more specific amendment seems to provide the proper home.
So the 4th Amendment it is. And there is no doubt that you can bring a false arrest claim, based on the 4th Amendment, because it forbids unreasonable “seizures,” an arrest is a “seizure,” and a false arrest is an unreasonable seizure. But a malicious prosecution claim does not require a “seizure,” just a bunch of lying SOBs who commence a prosecution without probable cause. Does this mean that you might be able to bring a malicious prosecution claim if you were “seized,” like with an arrest, or detention pending trial, but not otherwise? Well, that is messy and it’s cleaner to say you can’t bring a malicious prosecution claim at all under the 4th amendment.
Why doesn’t this suggest that maybe SDP is the right “home” for the claim after all? Beats me. But there it is. I don’t say it makes a great deal of sense, but that seems to be what they have in mind.Report