What would happen if qualified immunity is ended across the United States? There is a growing movement to eliminate qualified immunity for Police officers in the United States. What would happen from a legal perspective if this actually happened? Can officers be personally sued? Can officers be personally sued for cases prior to the elimination of the QI? Would police be required to have liability insurance in case they violate someones rights? How does this affect case law moving forward?
As a legal matter, very little would change, other than the fact that more cases would proceed through the normal stages of civil litigation. Many cases that would have been dismissed at the Rule 12 or Rule 56 stage would instead proceed to discovery or trial. This also means that the body of civil-rights case law would grow considerably. Right now, because courts already know that a right is not &quot;clearly established&quot; (the second prong of the QI inquiry), they will often refuse to consider whether an officer's actions were unconstitutional (the first prong of the QI inquiry). This has retarded the development of case law in these areas, but that problem could largely be cured with the end of qualified immunity. The end of qualified immunity wouldn't change a plaintiff's ability to sue officers personally. Even with qualified immunity, plaintiffs can and do sue officers personally. Qualified immunity lets some officers off the hook, but many officers nonetheless remain exposed to liability even after attempting to invoke it. Ending qualified immunity would merely increase -- albeit substantially -- the number of officers who can be held personally liable. That wouldn't mean that the officers would personally be required to carry insurance, though. A state or city could impose that requirement, but generally speaking, there's no such obligation. Instead, their employers typically carry their own insurance policies or are self-insured, and those policies cover claims against the officers working for the employer.
How would this scenario play out in the legal system? Prosecutor brings charges against EQM or tries to use that conviction to enhance a subsequent conviction. Defendant EQM raises the pardon as a defense. Prosecutor responds that the pardon was intended to cover EQM Prime, not EQM. The Court holds an evidentiary hearing to determine whether the President intended to pardon EQM Prime or EQM. The Court decides who the President intended to pardon based upon the evidence presented at the hearing, and rules accordingly. The burdens of proof are tricky. Usually affirmative defenses have a preponderance of the evidence burden on the proponent of the defense, but sometimes the defense must be disproved beyond a reasonable doubt. I don't know that part of the law well enough to know without lots of research and the outcome might not be uniform across the U.S. To my knowledge, there has never been a case that got this far in which the true identity of the beneficiary of the pardon was ambiguous. It is possible, but a vanishingly rare possibility. Almost always, someone gets a pardon by asking for it and determining whether EQM or EQM Prime asked resolves it, or a reference to the crime resolves it. If the Court concludes that both asked the same President to be pardoned for the same crime (e.g. if the same crime was committed jointly by father and by son who is named after father and doesn't use Jr. day to day) and the Court concludes that the President was probably confused and didn't realize that there were two requests from different people and not one, the judge would probably give them the benefit of the doubt and treat both as pardoned as that would still reflect the President's intent.
Even within the United States, this would depend upon the jurisdiction involved. Some jurisdictions recognize a legal privilege of a journalist to keep confidential sources secret (also called a "reporter's privilege"), while others do not. There is a split of authority on the question within the various circuits of the U.S. federal court system, and there is also a split of authority between different U.S. states. The First, Second, Third, Fifth, Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh, and D.C. Circuits have all held that a qualified reporter's privilege exists. In the recent case of U.S. v. Sterling, the Fourth expressly denied a reporter's privilege exists. Furthermore, forty states and the District of Columbia have enacted statutes called shield laws protecting journalists' anonymous sources. Three U.S. Court of Appeals circuits, the 6th, the 7th and the Federal Circuit, do not have any controlling case law on the subject. Ten U.S. states do not have shield laws protecting journalists' anonymous sources. The U.S. Department of Justice, as a matter of policy, seeks to compel journalists to disclose their anonymous sources only under specified conditions where the need is great, but this policy is not a defense available to a journalist in a case brought by the U.S. government. In the absence of a legal privilege, the journalist could be incarcerated until the information is disclosed or the need for the information is moot, for contempt of court. Quite a few journalists in the United States, faced with that choice, have opted to be incarcerated rather than to reveal a source. If the subpoena is upheld, even if the face of a good faith effort of the journalist to quash the subpoena on the basis of a legal privilege or other grounds, if the journalist does comply with the subpoena, the breach of the non-disclosure contract is legally excused and cannot be a ground for the journalist to be legally liable to the informant.
When you say "blanket immunity," I assume you're talking about transactional immunity -- the witness cannot ever be prosecuted for any crimes they testified about. This immunity is actually broader than that required by the US Constitution (although some states do require it). However, if it's provided, it absolutely covers crimes connected to what John is accused of. One very common use of immunity is to give a co-conspirator immunity to testify against another co-conspirator being charged with conspiracy. If transactional immunity wouldn't cover that conspiracy charge, it would pretty much defeat the purpose.
You are not obliged to say anything to a police officer during a traffic stop, in fact you are generally better off staying silent. This is your Fifth Amendment right to silence. The only exception to this is that the officer could ask for your name and you are obliged to give it under Arizona Laws 13-2412, but the answer to that is language-independent and is usually already answered with your driver's license in a traffic stop. If you did choose to communicate only in German, this may have the effect of frustrating the officer's investigation but if you only make truthful statements in German it is unlikely to be obstruction of their investigation. Arizona Laws 13-2409 is I believe the relevant section (emphasis mine): A person who knowingly attempts by means of bribery, misrepresentation, intimidation or force or threats of force to obstruct, delay or prevent the communication of information or testimony relating to a violation of any criminal statute to a peace officer, magistrate, prosecutor or grand jury or who knowingly injures another in his person or property on account of the giving by the latter or by any other person of any such information or testimony to a peace officer, magistrate, prosecutor or grand jury is guilty of a class 5 felony, except that it is a class 3 felony if the person commits the offense with the intent to promote, further or assist a criminal street gang. In general, a law that required you to give answers to a police officer during an investigation in English if you understand English and have waived your right to silence would violate your First Amendment right to free speech (as it is in effect "forced speech"). However, you would need to be careful not to tell the police officer that you do not understand English if that is not true, as it could be misrepresentation. Police officer training likely includes instructions for detaining someone that cannot understand them and the police can detain you and wait for an interpreter to continue their investigation if they determine that is necessary. You may actually be shooting yourself in the foot by doing this, because the time it takes for them to get an interpreter likely extends the amount of time the detainment can last while remaining "reasonable," so you may be waiting by the side of the road longer than you would have if you had simply told the officer that you were invoking your right to silence and followed the officer's instructions without speaking. As an aside, as more people are educated on their rights via the Internet and understand why they should always invoke their right to silence when detained, police officers will get more used to people they pull over immediately and politely telling them that they are going to invoke their right to silence. I doubt most police officers will hold it against you as long as you are otherwise cooperative and don't yell at them or berate them.
The federal precedential case on using deadly force against a fleeing suspect is Tennessee v. Garner: The use of deadly force to prevent the escape of all felony suspects, whatever the circumstances, is constitutionally unreasonable. It is not better that all felony suspects die than that they escape. Where the suspect poses no immediate threat to the officer and no threat to others, the harm resulting from failing to apprehend him does not justify the use of deadly force to do so. Where the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a threat of serious physical harm, either to the officer or to others, it is not constitutionally unreasonable to prevent escape by using deadly force. This case does not generally prohibit using deadly force to arrest someone who is fleeing in a vehicle, as vehicles are deadly weapons. A person fleeing police in a car poses a threat to pursuing officers and the general public so it is up to local policy and the officers on scene to weigh the risk of public harm against the interest of taking suspects alive and the risk of attempting to use deadly force against them. However, most if not all police departments do not allow the use of deadly force merely because someone is fleeing in a vehicle and also prohibit using firearms against a vehicle in this way, and at least according to the LA Times this is true of the Long Beach Police Department as well: According to a use-of-force policy from Long Beach Unified’s school safety office, officers are not permitted to fire at a moving vehicle. Firearms may be discharged only when reasonably necessary and justified under the circumstances, such as self-defense and the protection of others, the policy states. The policy also bars shooting at fleeing suspects.
Washington v. Davis held that if a law or other action (in this case, a Verbal Skill Test as part of D.C. police hiring practices) is not necessarily unconstitutional if it results in discriminatory outcome. In order to be actionable against the state, one must prove that the law was intended to discriminate from the creation of the law. Your quoted source is in fact wrong and your number 2 option is the correct summation of the quote. Only laws that are purposefully discriminatory are unconstitutional.
england-and-wales Initially, one should comply with the officer's instructions as he has the power under statutory Stop &amp; Search powers to detain someone for the purpose of the search (discussed here). Failure to do so may be an offence. If, subsequently, one considers the search and detention was unlawful, the first port of call is to lodge a complaint with the relevant police force who - depending on the circumstances - may escalate the complaint to the Independent Office for Police Conduct IOPC. You can complain directly to the police/other organisation (see ‘Who can I complain about?’ below for a list of the other organisations) or via the IOPC. If you complain via the IOPC, your complaint will be sent direct to the organisation involved. They will assess your complaint and contact you about how it will be handled. The IOPC will not be involved with this initial assessment of your complaint. If the complaint is found to be valid, then any offence committed by not complying with the office would (in all probability) be overturned on appeal. As well as any compensation awarded by the court, the Chief Constable may consider making an ex gratia payment (mentioned here). Note that there is no obligation to do anything if the interaction falls within the Stop &amp; Account provisions.