Man calls 911 to report that a store clerk pulled a gun on him, threatened him, and taunted him with racial slurs. When Saginaw, Mich. police arrive, they arrest the man(!) him for filing a false police report. He spends 18 days in jail before being released and all charges against him are dropped. Man sues for false arrest. Police: We get qualified immunity. Sixth Circuit: No, you don't.
Fourth Circuit (2021): This petitioner's South Carolina state court death sentence was defective because his trial counsel failed to present mitigating evidence during sentencing. We relied on evidence introduced in his federal habeas proceedings. Supreme Court (2022): Dear circuit court, reconsider your judgment in light of Shinn v. Martinez Ramirez, where we said you can't do that. Fourth Circuit (2023): Fine.
Former federal inmate, a devout Muslim, sues under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, alleging that when he would try to perform his required daily prayers during shift breaks at the prison commissary where he worked, prison guards—who also said "There is no good Muslim but a dead Muslim" and put a sticker on his back reading "I love pork bacon"—would follow him and deliberately interfere by making noises, talking loudly, and kicking boxes. Guards: We're entitled to qualified immunity. I mean, what gov't official could possibly know that violated the law?
Under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A), a court is authorized to grant a reduction in sentence, commonly referred to as “compassionate release,” if three requirements are met. First, the offender must exhaust administrative remedies in BOP. Second, the offender must demonstrate “extraordinary and compelling reasons” for a sentence reduction. Third, the court must find that relief is warranted under the section 3553(a) sentencing factors (the statute also provides that a reduction must be consistent with “applicable policy statements issued by the Sentencing Commission”).
Police: Our search of the defendant's backpack was valid because our only alternative to impounding it would have been to abandon it in public. It's not like we could just give it to the mysterious stranger who came up mere seconds after the defendant asked for his "girl" and who kept asking us to give it to her. She could have been anyone! Tenth Circuit: Um, or she could have been his girl. Nice try. Evidence suppressed!
The Speedy Trial Act says that a federal criminal defendant has a right to be tried within 70 days of his initial appearance, so this guy who had to wait almost a thousand days for his trial has a pretty good argument, right? Tenth Circuit: Wrong! (We won't spoil the court's reasoning, but it rhymes with "pænˈdemɪk.")
Allegation: Inmate at Rush City, Minn. correctional facility is attacked with a shank when he declines to pay off his cellmate's drug debt. He (and his family) repeatedly asked the prison for a transfer to another facility, but officials decline (in part because the assailant attests "the issue was dead.") The assailant attacks again the first chance he gets by throwing a heated liquid in his face and striking him in the head and face, causing serious injuries. District court: Things happen. Summary judgment for prison officials.
Two guys go walking down the sidewalk of a Richmond, Va. housing complex. Cops see them, recognize them, and accuse them of trespassing based partly upon a trespassing arrest from eight years ago. Cops ask the guys to lift their shirts. One does, one kind of does. The kind-of one is also wearing skinny jeans, and there was a sketchy tip based on vague descriptions he sold drugs. Officers threaten him with trespassing charges and then detain and pat him down, finding a gun. Permissible Terry stop? District court: Totally permissible. Imposes 10 years imprisonment.
In his 2023 Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. focused on the new technology while steering clear of Supreme Court ethics.
Detroit man spends more than 20 years in prison for a 12-year-old girl's murder—a crime he did not commit. Indeed, another man's fingerprints are on the murder weapon, and the defendant's confession (which got the cause of death wrong) followed a detective's telling him he could go home after signing it. Once he's released, he sues the city and involved officials who, as you might expect, assert qualified immunity.