A Federal Judge Just Called Out the Supreme Court

Only in 2022 did Jennings finally recant his story. He told officers that he had taken “one and a half shots” of methamphetamine before making the allegations and that he had accused Green out of pure self-interest. “I was just high and try [sic] to help myself get out of jail,” Jennings claimed in a written statement. He also claimed that he had no idea who had killed Robinson and that he himself had been hospitalized for unspecified mental disorders when the murder had occurred.

Local prosecutors dismissed the case soon thereafter, and Green walked free roughly two years after his original arrest. Last year, he sued Thomas, the city of Jackson, Mississippi, as her employer, and Hinds County for the conditions of his detention in federal court. Thomas filed a motion to dismiss the case, invoking qualified immunity. (The city and the county also filed similar motions, but Reeves will rule on them separately.) She argued that she was not liable for Green’s travails since he had been indicted by a grand jury. While Thomas did not deny that she had presented evidence to the grand jury, she noted that Green could not prove it because those proceedings are secret.

At the heart of Green’s case is what is known as a Section 1983 claim. That provision in federal law allows people to sue state and local officials for violating their federal constitutional rights. Congress enacted it as part of the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, which is also known as the Enforcement Act, to protect the civil rights of Black Southerners during Reconstruction. Section 1983 cases underwent a revival of sorts in the 1950s and 1960s, only to find themselves curtailed again by the court in Pierson.