Meanwhile, in NYC...
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The DA is looking kinda stupid...
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Suit:
The New York City bodega clerk who had murder charges dropped after video showed he acted in self-defense is suing District Attorney Alvin Bragg and NYPD for civil rights violations.
Jose Alba, an ex-bodega worker who was attacked behind the counter on July 1, 2022, by 35-year-old Austin Simon and his girlfriend, Tina Lee, filed a lawsuit in the Southern District of New York on Friday alleging he was wrongfully prosecuted because of the Manhattan district attorney's "racial equity" policies. The complaint names Bragg, NYPD Detective William Garcia, and unidentified arresting officers and detectives of the NYPD as defendants in the case.
"New York County District Attorney Alvin Bragg and/or his subordinates, following Bragg’s policy to achieve ‘racial equity’ in the Manhattan criminal justice system, charged Plaintiff with murder in the second degree and asked for high bail at Plaintiff’s arraignment," the complaint states.
"Despite the fact that Simon and Lee were the initial aggressors, it was Plaintiff who was arrested, incarcerated, and wrongfully prosecuted. While in theory, Bragg’s ‘racial equity’ policies are a well-intentioned attempt by him to implement even-handed justice, the means and methods employed by Bragg have instead had an opposite effect and resulted in discrimination against certain defendants based on race."
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@jon-nyc said in Meanwhile, in NYC...:
Yes
Qualified immunity is a judicial doctrine created by the Supreme Court that shields state actors from liability for their misconduct, even when they break the law. Under this doctrine, government agents—including but not limited to police officers—can never be sued for violating someone’s civil rights, unless they violated “clearly established law.” While this is an amorphous, malleable standard, it generally requires civil rights plaintiffs to show not just a clear legal rule, but a prior case with functionally identical facts.
In other words, it is entirely possible—and quite common—for courts to hold that government agents did violate someone’s rights, but that the victim has no legal remedy, simply because that precise sort of misconduct had not occurred in past cases. In the words of Don Willett, a federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit: “To some observers, qualified immunity smacks of unqualified impunity, letting public officials duck consequences for bad behavior—no matter how palpably unreasonable—as long as they were the first to behave badly.”
