Court Bends Space-Time Continuum to Shield Police From Liability

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Samuel Scott Jr. had a bad day on June 1, 2018. After he parked his Jeep Compass with the keys in the ignition and the engine running near his aunt’s home in Miami, a thief hopped in the vehicle and drove away.

This was just the beginning of Scott’s troubles. Things got worse when he called the Miami Police Department. The responding officers accused Scott of faking the theft, even though it was physically impossible for him to have done it. The police arrested Scott anyway and hauled him to jail, where detention officers strip-searched him and held him overnight.

Prosecutors later looked at the evidence and refused to press charges. Scott spent the next seven years trying to hold the police accountable in civil court. But his quest for justice fizzled without a trial last month at the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The case highlights the crazy, mixed-up world of qualified immunity, a judge-made doctrine that shields public employees from accountability when they violate civil rights.

The Miami saga played out on two fronts. Scott reported the theft at 5:40 p.m., dispatchers released a bulletin about the theft at 6:22 p.m., and an officer met Scott where the Jeep had disappeared at 6:30 p.m.

Elsewhere, a patrol officer saw the Jeep speeding at 6:05 p.m. He did not yet know the vehicle was stolen, but he turned on his sirens and followed it until it crashed into a parked car. After the driver fled on foot, the officer searched the Jeep and found an unregistered gun and marijuana.

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Police dispute the crash time, but the official report says 6:22 p.m.—eight minutes before officers met Scott “some two miles away.” Few people can run so far, so fast. A Norwegian sprinter covered this distance in 7:54.10 in 2023. But that was a world record, and the athlete was 22 and in spiked shoes on a rubberized track in Paris.

Scott was 42 in regular clothes on the streets of Miami—on a humid summer day. The 11th Circuit decision acknowledges that pulling off an Olympic-level feat under such conditions would be “remarkable.” But who can say Scott didn’t cheat?

“It is altogether plausible to believe that Scott did not actually run on foot from the crash site to the scene of the purported car theft, but rather took another form of transportation—maybe a bicycle, an electric scooter, or another vehicle,” the court writes.

Additional possibilities include a jet pack, helicopter, or skateboard. Maybe Scott found a horse tethered to a hitching post. Yet even with transportation, Scott would have needed a costume change. The man who fled the crash site wore a white tank top, but officers found Scott in a black T-shirt. Most critically, Scott also would have needed advance planning, considering he reported the theft 25 minutes before the chase began.

The officer who witnessed the hit-and-run did not care. He found an employee badge with Scott’s photo hanging from the Jeep’s rearview mirror and decided that Scott was the culprit. The officer drove to the scene of the theft and made this allegation in person.

Full conversations are unavailable because the police switched their bodycams on and off. But officers arrested Scott on suspicion of reckless driving, fleeing from the scene of an accident, falsely reporting a crime, carrying an unlicensed firearm, and possessing marijuana.

After clearing his name, Scott sued the officers in 2021. Government victims deserve their day in court. Yet the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida granted qualified immunity and dismissed the case on March 21, 2023. The 11th Circuit upheld this decision last month.

The case was just another example in a long line of cases in which judges will accept almost any excuse when considering qualified immunity, apparently even if it means bending the space-time continuum. Public employees can shoot a puppy, steal cash, or torture a prison inmate without consequences. Yet results may vary.

Waylon Bailey beat qualified immunity after deputies arrested him for making fun of their department in Rapides Parish, Louisiana. But Anthony Novak got the opposite result when he made fun of the police department in Parma, Ohio.

People who sue the government must play qualified immunity roulette. Scott rolled the dice and lost.

The courts and the country cannot possibly revaluate this judge-invented doctrine fast enough.