This is certainly troubling:

Let’s say you’re pulled over for some traffic violation. The police officer doesn’t like the “tone” you’re taking with him, and so he charges you with assaulting an officer. In your statement to the police, you note that you never touched or threatened to touch the police officer. The officer is simply lying to harass you.

The D.A., after reading the arresting officer’s report, charges you with assaulting an officer. You know the case against you is built on lies. Since you make too much to get a public defender, you spend between $10,000 and $25,000 on a criminal defense lawyer. After a jury trial, you are promptly acquitted.

Since the only reason you were charged with a crime was because the police officer lied, you decided to sue the officer for malicious prosecution. Like 99% of Americans, paying for a lawyer almost bankrupted you. At the very least, you want to recoup your legal fees. Can your case go forward?

Unfortunately, the answer in the Ninth Circuit now seems to be, No.

I can’t vouch for the above blog’s analysis, but it seems to be about the way section 1983 has been applied to other government transgressions. Which is to say narrowly. Here’s the case.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 7th, 2006 at 9:30 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.