General skepticism toward qualified immunity, the legal doctrine that makes it difficult to sue rights-violating state and local government officials, has over the years brought together weird coalitions, to put it mildly, and challenged some of the stereotypes about traditional partisan fault lines. A federal judge this week floated one such alliance: If you hated Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court precedent that enshrined abortion as a constitutional right, then you should really disdain qualified immunity.
Stay with me here. That connection came nestled in an opinion concerning a police detective who allegedly cost an innocent man almost two years of his life by using a nearly-incomprehensible statement from someone in jail, who was reportedly under the influence of meth, and then guiding that same person to pick her chosen defendant, Desmond Green, out of a photo line-up—after her witness explicitly picked someone else. As a result, Green was arrested for capital murder and spent 22 months in the Hinds County Detention Center, which he claims was infested with rodents and where his cellmate was stabbed.
