Certified immunity was an enormous speaking level through the 2020 election and nonetheless stays a really related challenge to this present day. The concept that law enforcement officials must be immune from felony prices and private lawsuits for acts that they commit whereas within the line of obligation is preposterous, to say the very least. Safety from accountability and penalties will not be an expert perk that anybody must be afforded, a lot much less those that are allegedly skilled to be accountable with a firearm every day.
Enter, former Decatur, Alabama, police officer Mac Marquette. BOSSIP beforehand reported on an incident by which Marquette gunned down a Black man named Stephen Perkins who allegedly used a firearm to threaten a tow truck driver who was trying to repossess Perkins’ car. On the time, police reported that Perkins “refused” to drop his firearm and turned towards Marquette earlier than being fatally shot. The officer was subsequently arrested and indicted for homicide by a grand jury.
In keeping with NBC Information, regardless of Marquette’s legal professionals’ try to make use of “stand your floor” statutes to get immunity for his or her consumer, a decide has denied that movement, and the homicide trial will begin as deliberate on June 9.
Morgan County Circuit Decide Charles Elliott denied Marquette’s movement, writing within the courtroom submitting that no crime was being dedicated when officers arrived and that they weren’t allowed to be concerned in a repossession as a result of they didn’t have a courtroom order.
WHNT notes that Marquette additionally argued that he was performing in self-defense as a police officer. Nevertheless, the decide made an important distinction about that place…
“Agent King has testified that if the defendant was going to Perkins residence to help Combs within the repossession, then he was performing exterior the scope of his employment as a legislation enforcement officer,” the decide mentioned. “Nevertheless, if the officers have been going to maintain the peace, then these two questions are questions of truth that may solely be answered by a jury.”
BOSSIP can be conserving a really shut eye on this case, with explicit regard to the jury choice. A homicide case involving an armed Black man and a younger white police officer can get very spooky if the “good ol’ boys” get to press their antebellum thumbs onto the scales of justice.
