A Black Texas man who aspired to become a police officer spent 16 months fighting felony accusations that he assaulted two officers during a “welfare check” at his home. A jury acquitted him after his son recorded video of the arrest.
The video caught Huntsville police and prosecutors by surprise, Stewart said, because they had expected to secure a conviction based on the officers’ accounts.
The cops accused Stewart of spitting in one of their faces and shoving the other officer, but none of that is captured on video.
“I don’t like to call people liars,” Stewart told ABC 13 Houston after his acquittal.
“But fabrication, yes. Cover up, yes.”
In the US that comes down to Harlow v Fitzgerald, ç 1982. The crux of the case is §1983. Should have been fairly straightforward, as when 1983 was written and passed by Congress, in 1881 it stripped all legal immunity from all civil servants. In 1884 an unnamed secretary took it upon themselves to remove a 16 word clause that, by said removal, reversed the intent of the law. This occured when said secretary was given the task of directly copying The Congressional Record, word for word, in 1884. The SCOTUS of 1982 was handed the illegally amended wording, though they probably didn’t know that, given the wording of both the majority and dissenting opinions.
http://web.archive.org/web/20230520080201/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/15/us/politics/qualified-immunity-supreme-court.html