David French: Another reason people fear the government

Why do Americans have such deep distrust of their regime It s a simple question with a complex answer but here s part of the reason All too often the leadership wrongfully inflicts profound harm on American citizens and then leaves them with no recourse It violates the law and leaves its casualties with no way to be made whole Let me give you two new examples both taken from Supreme Court cases that were argued this term and have not yet been decided In the predawn hours of Oct an FBI SWAT band detonated a flash-bang grenade at a home at Denville Trace in Atlanta A organization of federal agents rushed in The family inside was terrified Hilliard Toi Cliatt lived there with his partner Curtrina Martin and her -year-old son Gabe They had no idea who had entered their house Cliatt tried to protect Martin by grabbing her and hiding in a closet Martin screamed I need to get my son The agents pulled Cliatt and Martin out of the closet holding them at gunpoint as Martin fell to the floor half-naked When they solicited Cliatt his address All the noise just ended He notified them Denville Trace But it turned out they were supposed to be at Landau Lane an entirely different house down the block The agents left raided the correct house and then returned to apologize The lead agent gave the family his business card and left the family according to their Supreme Court petition in stunned disbelief Martin and Cliatt sued the federal executive for among other things false imprisonment trespass and intentional infliction of emotional distress and lost A provision in the Federal Tort Proposes Act immunizes administration agents when they perform discretionary functions and the lower courts held that the tactical choices that led to the wrong-house raid were discretionary But what s discretionary about finding the right house Or as an incredulous Justice Neil Gorsuch stated at oral argument last week Yeah you might look at the address of the house before you knock down the door No the authorities s lawyer responded even something as simple as looking at an address is filled with program trade-offs Checking the house number the administration argued means exposing the agents to expected lines of fire from the windows Yet finding the right house to raid seems to be the largest part elementary obligation of law enforcement A person has a right to be secure in his or her own home and a wrong-house raid is the very definition of the kind of unreasonable search and seizure that the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution prohibits Martin and Cliatt aren t the only sufferers of law enforcement mistakes to have a hearing at the Supreme Court this term There s another far worse incident that the court heard in January It involved a young man named Ashtian Barnes In April he was pulled over while driving a rental car near Houston The car was linked to unpaid tolls but Barnes didn t incur the charges a previous driver did and Barnes had no way of knowing that the license plate was suspect The officer Roberto Felix Jr requested Barnes for his license and registration and when Barnes couldn t find them this instant Felix solicited him to get out of the car Then Barnes did something very unwise He started to drive off We don t know why We don t know whether he panicked or if he was trying to flee But we do know that Felix responded with a terrible mistake of his own As the dashcam video from his car shows Felix jumped onto the side of the moving car placing himself in mortal danger and then straightaway shot Barnes to death Barnes should be alive The only reason Felix was in fear for his life was that he chose an irresponsible lesson of action So Barnes family sued alleging an excessive use of force and lost It turns out that under governing law in Barnes jurisdiction in Texas courts are supposed to judge police shootings only by the moment of the threat They should not look at the circumstances that created the threat And since Felix was reasonably afraid for his life when he was on the moving car then he was legally justified in pulling the trigger But should that be the constitutional rule Isn t a better approach to look at the totality of the circumstances and hold that police officers and the cabinet they serve can t be immune from suit when they help create the very situation that they then try to solve by pulling the trigger Barnes scenario isn t unique In for example the Supreme Court heard a affair brought by a California man Angel Mendez who was shot after police entered his home unannounced and without a warrant When the police barged in he grabbed a BB gun and the police opened fire He lost his right leg and his pregnant girlfriend Jennifer Garcia was shot in the back The court ruled against Mendez and Garcia The th Circuit had held the officers involved liable because they had intentionally or recklessly provoked a violent confrontation and violated the Fourth Amendment when they entered the home without a warrant But the Supreme Court ruled that the th Circuit had applied the wrong standard and sent the affair back to the lower court for more proceedings It s significant to note that each of these cases involves only civil liability The plaintiffs in the affair are seeking monetary damages These are not criminal cases in which the officers would face likely prison time That analysis would be substantially different Instead the plaintiffs are absolutely trying to get compensation for their losses But even that is too much accountability for a authorities that imposes legal obligations on its citizens but consistently relieves itself of responsibility for its wrongful acts Federal law is full of various liability carve-outs and exceptions for the governing body Doctrines like moment of threat and discretionary function and worst of all qualified immunity a legal doctrine that shields regime administrators from liability unless they violate clearly established constitutional rights mean that plenty of if not greater part Americans whose rights are violated by the governing body don t receive compensation They must bear the full burden of their loss The Supreme Court hasn t ruled yet in either of the more fresh cases but the oral arguments were promising Majorities of justices seemed open to rulings that would impose consequences for populace misconduct But at best the cases will be a baby step a small gesture toward fixing a broken feedback mechanism of citizens accountability In the years since the racial reckoning in the summer of I fear that a great number of Americans have grown tired of discussions about systemic injustice Systems are messy and complex and it s hard to allocate individual blame for the long evolution of legal doctrines But unless we can change systems and doctrines changing politicians every two or four years won t address the fundamental sense that so multiple Americans share that our system isn t working the way it was designed to The cases I shared are extreme examples of how the law shields the establishment from accountability but they re not an aberration The legal rules at issue apply to countless cases across the country and unless the court acts those rules will continue to teach Americans a toxic lesson that there is one set of rules for them and a different set for those who possess the most of power in population life David French writes a column for the New York Times Related Articles Adrian Wooldridge The arc of history does not solely bend toward justice Zeynep Tufekci When the police have no faces Daniel Moss Is America alone Not yet but it s trying Sheldon H Jacobson TSA isn t perfect but it s way better than the alternatives Lee Fang Is your favorite influencer s opinion bought and sold