Between 1995 and 2015, according to a report from the the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, nearly all—a whopping 96%—of the civil-rights complaints against law enforcement got turned down by US attorney’s offices around the country. The few cases that resulted in federal convictions in the past included the Los Angeles officers acquitted on state charges in the brutal beating of Rodney King in 1991. Just a day before the Sterling decision, Michael Slager, the South Carolina officer who fatally shot unarmed motorist Walter Scott in the back in 2015, pleaded guilty to civil-rights charges as part of a deal. [...]
The statement shows exactly why it’s so hard to bring charges in a case like this. For one, prosecutors have to prove that the use of force was not “objectively reasonable” in the given circumstances. “The standard is sufficiently vague that it’s very hard to prove, especially beyond reasonable doubt,” said Barry Friedman, law professor and director of New York University’s Policing Project. What is “objectively reasonable,” a standard determined by a 1989 Supreme Court ruling, use of force may be vastly different for different people. [...]
The other component is the officer’s “willfulness,” or intent to violate someone’s constitutional right. “This high legal standard–one of the highest standards of intent imposed by law–requires proof that the officer acted with the specific intent to do something the law forbids. It is not enough to show that the officer made a mistake, acted negligently, acted by accident or mistake, or even exercised bad judgment,” the DOJ says.
As the department itself admits, this is a nearly impossible standard to hold a case to. The NAACP said in a statement that the standard is “deeply flawed” and that it “frustrates the meaning of the federal statute designed to protect against the deprivation of rights by officers of the state.”
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