Supreme Court Deals Blow To Lying Cops, Lowers Bar For Malicious Prosecution Lawsuits

I’ll admit this recent decision sort of passed me by. My brief read of it suggested nothing more was happening than an affirmation of preexisting law via lots of procedural discussion. There are plenty of hoops people who have been falsely accused of crimes need to jump through before a court will even entertain their complaints. And there’s plenty of immunity — some qualified and some absolute — that stands in the way of seeking justice. Most of these claims fail. And for obvious reasons. Plenty of inmates feel they’ve been falsely accused. Few actually have been. Even fewer still can actually prove it.

But the Supreme Court’s Thompson v. Clark decision [PDF] rewrites the law, giving even more people the option to pursue malicious prosecution lawsuits. The bar is no longer a declaration of innocence by a judge or a jury. It can now be brought when prosecutors refuse to prosecute because no evidence supports the charges. This is (potentially) huge, as Mark Joseph Stern reports for Slate.

The Supreme Court has spent years debating whether the Fourth Amendment prohibits “malicious prosecutions,” or the filing of bogus criminal charges, without arriving at an answer. On Monday, Kavanaugh finally broke this impasse with an unexpectedly great decision that underscores his talent for dressing up major decisions in the guise of minor ones. His opinion in Thompson v. Clark declared that the court has already recognized a Fourth Amendment right against malicious prosecutions, which he defined as the “wrongful initiation of charges without probable cause.” Kavanaugh’s assertion is not actually true, but it doesn’t matter: The Supreme Court has now willed this protection into existence, establishing a federal shield against falsified charges.

This is obviously not the preferred path for precedent. But we’ll take it, I guess? I mean the Third Party Doctrine and the doctrine of qualified immunity exists nowhere in the laws passed by Congress, but they’re still both law of the land thanks to Supreme Court decisions. Getting the law wrong to reach the right conclusion increases the chances the Supreme Court will review this decision in the future and undo the majority’s decision, but for now, this means people that actually haven’t been convicted or served any time can sue cops and prosecutors for trying to prosecute them on bogus charges, rather than limited to those against whom the bogus charges have stuck.

The path to this point is completely unsurprising. A person asserted their rights when law enforcement showed up unexpectedly at their doorway. And police responded with violence and “contempt of cop” charges against the person asserting their rights.

Larry Thompson lived with his fiancée (now wife) and their newborn baby girl in an apartment in Brooklyn, New York. In January 2014, Thompson’s sister-in-law was also staying there. The sister-in-law apparently suffered from a mental illness. One day that January, the sister-in-law called 911 and claimed that Thompson was sexually abusing his one-week-old baby daughter. Two Emergency Medical Technicians promptly responded. When the EMTs arrived at the family’s apartment, Thompson asked the EMTs why they were there and denied that anyone had called 911. The EMTs left and informed the police of the situation.

The EMTs and four police officers then returned to the apartment. When they arrived, Thompson told them that they could not come in without a warrant. The police officers nonetheless entered and, after a brief scuffle, handcuffed Thompson. The EMTs followed the officers into the apartment and examined the baby. After finding red marks on the baby’s body, the EMTs took the baby to the hospital for evaluation. The marks turned out to be a case of diaper rash. The medical professionals found no signs of abuse.

Meanwhile, the police officers arrested Thompson for resisting their entry into the apartment. Thompson was taken to a local hospital and then to jail. While Thompson was in custody, one of the police officers prepared and filed a criminal complaint charging Thompson with obstructing governmental administration and resisting arrest. Thompson remained in custody for two days. A judge then released him on his own recognizance.

Before the trial, the prosecution dismissed the charges. No explanation was given by prosecutors and the judge simply accepted the motion to dismiss without comment. According to precedent, this shouldn’t be enough to allow a lawsuit of this type to proceed. There was no “affirmative indications of innocence,” only a dismissal without explanation.

The Supreme Court says the previous bar for malicious prosecution suits was too high. Fourth Amendment claims — like false searches and seizures that lead to bogus criminal charges — can now be pursued in federal court even without an actual acquittal or judicial determination of innocence.

So… the Fourth Amendment and the path to justice both got a little better, perhaps by accident. When so much goes the government’s way in cases like these, we’ll take any wins we can get. And this should make it a bit clearer to cops and prosecutors that lying about criminal acts to punish someone for asserting their rights is going to be a bit more difficult to defend.