Overlapping immunity doctrines insulate officials from the consequences of their actions, no matter how egregious.
Oklahoma resident Donald Logsdon was fixing his neighbor’s generator in March 2020 when three deputy United States Marshals snuck up behind him, kicked him in the head and took turns stomping on his body while he was unconscious. The excessive force was a clear-cut constitutional violation, but when Logsdon tried to vindicate his rights in court, a federal judge decided he had no business being there.
Logsdon’s situation isn’t an anomaly. Due to myriad different, often overlapping immunity doctrines, government officials are overwhelmingly insulated from the consequences of their actions, no matter how egregious. The result? People are left with virtually no recourse when their rights are violated, and the Constitution becomes little more than an empty promise.
As Chief Justice John Marshall observed over 200 years ago, the “very essence of civil liberty certainly consists in the right of every individual to claim the protection of the laws, whenever he receives an injury,” and a government cannot be called a “government of laws, and not of men … if the laws furnish no remedy for the violation of a vested legal right.”
Yet far too often, people find themselves in that exact position. Logsdon had a warrant for his arrest on the day federal agents attacked him — though that doesn’t excuse their behavior. But , an innocent college student from Michigan, did nothing except walk on a public sidewalk in broad daylight when members of a law enforcement task force misidentified and brutally beat him. Both Logsdon and King ended up hospitalized.
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