Louisiana Voice

Chalk one up for a citizen’s rights to overcome the unfair restrictions of qualified immunity when a law enforcement agency oversteps its authority in meting out punitive actions in retaliation for constitutionally-protected free speech.

That’s just a somewhat fancy way of saying that Jerry Rogers has zapped St. Tammany Parish Sheriff Randy Smith and his deputies who arbitrarily decided they could violate Rogers’s rights in a manner reminiscent of some third world dictatorship.

U.S. District Judge Jane Triche-Milazzo ruled last Friday that Sheriff Randy Smith and his St. Tammany deputies illegally arrested Rogers, a former federal agent (and former St. Tammany Parish deputy), for the unpardonable sin of posting comments critical of the sheriff department’s futile investigation of the murder of Nanette Krentel. For the complete ruling, click here.

Smith ordered the arrest of Rogers for criminal defamation even though he was fully aware that the state’s CRIMINAL DEFAMATION LAW, which despite its remaining on the books, had been declared unconstitutional some four decades earlier.

But Smith, channeling Adm. David Farragut (“Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead”), had Rogers arrested despite what Judge Triche-Milazzo terms a lack of probable cause “to arrest and detain him after he sent a series of anonymous emails to the dead woman’s sister lambasting the investigation.”

Judge Triche-Milazzo’s ruling, which Smith said he will appeal, knocks down -at least in this case – a major hurdle for plaintiffs seeking damages from law enforcement agencies: qualified immunity. Qualified immunity is the legal principle that grants government officials (also including prosecutors and judges) immunity from responsibility for their actions.

The American Bar Association takes the position that qualified immunity, imposed by the U.S. Supreme Court and never enacted as official statute, is “illogical and unjust” and “fundamentally illegal.”

The ABA says on its WEB PAGE, “Qualified immunity is a judicial doctrine created by the Supreme Court that shields state actors from liability for their misconduct, even when they break the law. Under this doctrine, government agents—including but not limited to police officers—can never be sued for violating someone’s civil rights, unless they violated ‘clearly established law.’

“In other words, it is entirely possible—and quite common—for courts to hold that government agents did violate someone’s rights, but that the victim has no legal remedy, simply because that precise sort of misconduct had not occurred in past cases. In the words of a federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit: ‘To some observers, qualified immunity smacks of unqualified impunity, letting public officials duck consequences for bad behavior—no matter how palpably unreasonable—as long as they were the first to behave badly.’”

Judge Triche-Milazzo’s ruling clears the way for Rogers’s lawsuit against Smith and the sheriff’s department to go forward in December.

It’s a rare hurdle for a plaintiff to clear because of the protection normally afforded by the qualified immunity shield.

A Louisiana legislative committee, meanwhile, killed House Bill 51 by Rep. Edmond Jordan (D-Baton Rouge) in 2020 that would have repealed qualified immunity in this state.

To date, three states – New Mexico, Colorado, and Connecticut – have passed laws repealing qualified immunity for police officers. The U.S. SUPREME COURT, meanwhile, continues to perpetuate and even encourage police misconduct by protecting officers from legal liability by failing to reform the doctrine.

The St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office, meanwhile, seems to have hit a dead-end in the investigation of the July 2017 murder of Krentel

Smith pitched the need for tax renewals for his department but the supposed financial crunch apparently wasn’t so bad that it prevented him from purchasing a $1.3 million mobile command center and drone system – a fancy way of describing a MOTOR HOME – for his department’s “crime-fighting arsenal.

The budget-busting purchase, made in February, will obviously be a valuable tool in solving Krentel’s murder. I imagine that drone will detect all manner of clues to be forwarded to deputies as they track down the killer in the air conditioned comfort of the sheriff’s mobile command center.

A Facebook posting by local citizen Terry King said, “I would hazard a guess that Jerry Rogers certainly felt the weight of the government against him in an outrageous attempt to chill his free speech …using a law that was …unconstitutional. Let’s not forget that Randy Smith was groomed for this position by convicted child molester and former sheriff Rodney “Jack” Strain, who used his office to silence his victims. It’s an unfortunate pattern in St. Tammany Parish that needs to stop.”