The lack of frequent examples of holding government or individuals accountable through large monetary penalties doesn’t mean we’re unable to enforce the Constitution. The remedy for Constitutional violations is through legal action that forces the government to undo their actions and ensure the citizen is able to exercise their rights. That sort of thing happens all the time.
George Floyd’s family settled for $27 million.
Sounds about right. There’s a lot about government that has a profound existential absurdity.
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Sure, that was murder.
But when the govt tramples on the rights of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, have there been any large punitive damage awards in those kinds of cases?
If yes, why have those previous damage awards not been a solid motivator for local, state, and federal agencies to follow the constitution?
They sued for violation of 4th Amendment rights along with the excessive force aspect.
It certainly seems that most of the large settlement or judgment numbers for 4th Amendment violation cases are at the State or local level. Whether that’s because it’s harder at the federal level, or because it occurs more often at the state and local levels, maybe the lawyers can answer.
My guess is that Federal law enforcement has historically been somewhat been better at avoiding these violations than at the lower levels.
The case I mentioned above made these claims effectively impossible at the federal level. It basically says that if there’s any remedy then a lawsuit can’t move forward.
In that case, the Border Patrol having an internal process to investigate its own agents was enough to bar Boule from suing in court. Even though that internal process wouldn’t compensate him in any way.
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So, if we look at the federal level, if govt agencies deliberately violate major elements of the US Constitution and then the agencies claim to be “investigating” the events (but the investigations are a sham and the agencies continue violating the Constitution), is it safe to say then that the citizens whose rights have been repeatedly violated essentially have no effective recourse ?
At least with regard to the 4th amendment, the Supreme Court is saying that remedies should be defined be Congress. So your recourse is to vote, lobby, call your Congressman, etc.
It’s sort of ridiculous that they’ll basically reject most 4th amendment cases now on this principle, yet I can think of many 1st and 2nd amendment cases that have gone to court in recent years.
So work for change at the legislative level.
I don’t expect a change at the court level until there’s some turnover or until some agency searches a justice’s house without a warrant.
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Wow, that is sobering.
Kinda seems like our great constitution is incredibly flimsy.
Not a constitutional case, but remember all the lobbying and shaming of Congress that was done by Jon Stewart to get some relief for the 9/11 first responders? It can work…
If you’ve committed a crime but the search is illegal, you may get a huge windfall — you may escape conviction because the evidence is excluded. Conversely, if you are innocent of a crime, you may get no compensation after an illegal search. Some would say that is backwards.
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yeah that does seem backwards…
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