After more than eight long years, hundreds of
legal documents later and several court challenges (including a
reversal by the 9th circuit court of appeals), Checkpoint USA's
lawsuit is finally being scheduled for trial after being launched in December 2003 against an
illegal checkpoint operation conducted in December of 2002.
The last hurdle to trial was overcome on January 23, 2012 when
United States Circuit Judge Wallace Tashima (sitting by designation)
denied our motion for
summary judgment, denied the defendant's motion for
summary judgment with regards to whether or not the checkpoint was conducted as an
exercise in general law enforcement and ordered a final pre-trial
conference for setting trial dates.
The court orders referred to above are available on this website at:
I encourage folks to not only read the judge's summary judgment
order above but also the original motions for summary judgment from the
defendants (TOPD police) and the plaintiff (Checkpoint USA) to get a
feel for why it can be so difficult to hold police officers accountable
within the judicial system.
Of note in the court order is the granting of
summary judgment on one key issue in favor of the defendants. The issue was whether or
not the actions of individual officers at the checkpoint were reasonable
& their discretion appropriately limited. This is separate and
distinct from the question of whether or not the checkpoint itself was
conducted for general law enforcement purposes.
Under the current system, in order for a plaintiff to overcome a claim of
qualified immunity by a police defendant, the plaintiff must show that the law was
'clearly established' and the officers knowingly violated it. In this
case, the court effectively ruled there was enough evidence for a claim
that the police officers were knowingly violating the law but because
'case law' has not established that their actions were clearly illegal,
they are entitled to qualified immunity. In other words, a 'cop' out for
cops.
Regardless of the partial granting of summary judgment in favor of
the defendants however, we still go to trial on the most important issue
of all. That issue is whether or not the defendants illegally expanded
the scope of a lawful sobriety checkpoint into an illegal general law
enforcement dragnet operation.
The motions for summary judgment and various responses from both
parties giving rise to the court order discussed earlier appear below.
Additional exhibits associated with the motions are also available in
the lawsuit's document
timeline:
