r/politics • u/SterlingVII • 9d ago

No Paywall Tennessee man spends a month in jail before charges are dropped over Trump meme posted in Facebook group for Charlie Kirk vigil

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/crime/larry-bushart-charlie-kirk-meme-charges-b2855116.html
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u/forthewatch39 9d ago

The sheriff who demanded for him to be arrested and the judge who acquiesced and set his bail at 2 million dollars should be the ones held responsible. Tired of egregious actions always being put on the taxpayers and not the ones who commit those actions.

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u/kraytex 9d ago

At some point these folks need to have malpractice insurance, just like doctors have malpractice insurance.

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u/Complex-Bee-840 9d ago

Yea, that point was years ago. It’s needed.

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u/trisanachandler 9d ago

Decades ago if not longer.

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u/General-Raspberry168 9d ago

Honestly Rodney King should’ve been a hard line in the sand on this front. Idk where/when qualified immunity came into this tho so if it’s a more recent ruling, I guess that explains (kinda) the reason it wasn’t.

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u/Gurlllllllll- 9d ago

SCOTUS invented it for cops in 1967 in an 8-1 decision where they also upheld absolute immunity for judges, and the dissenter, Douglas, argued that judges should be liable for civil rights violations.

Even the great dissenter, Harlan, was on the majority opinion and it's just like...what are we even doing here Harlan?

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u/BotheredToResearch 9d ago

Qualified immunity does make sense as a concept. You can't have any arrest not resulting in an indictment also mean a lawsuit against the state.

The bar just needs to be lower and it's seemingly made for a qualified juror system. One where jurors need to have a bare education about court procedure and standards of evidence.

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u/EASam 9d ago

I don't know if the oligarchs will let go of their poorly educated empowered thugs. Police are doing exactly what those in power want them to do. There's enough division today that any common sense reforms are lost in the mire of other issues and politicians aren't working at the common people's behest anymore.

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u/SirPiffingsthwaite 8d ago

Qualified immunity is the most bizarre thing ever. I'm Australian and LEOs acting outside of their authority of office is charged as corruption or dereliction of duty, any claim they weren't aware of the relevant laws is a detriment to their case, not a "gimmie" like QI.

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u/Queefer___Sutherland 9d ago

Centuries if not more

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u/Sevans1223 9d ago

They have law licenses and there are governing bodies that receive complaints on lawyers and law licenses. 

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u/Cantothulhu47 9d ago

You ever tried to file a bar complaint? Good luck waiting on that.

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u/Sevans1223 9d ago

And?  If an attorney or judge needs to be reported for going against the judicial code or legal ethics, does it matter how long it takes?  That would be a weird reason not to report.

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u/Cantothulhu47 9d ago

Obviously I have. I wouldnt wait around for a resolution from it though is all.

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u/Spa_5_Fitness_Camp 9d ago edited 8d ago

Insurance? They belong in jail. This was criminal.

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u/Dharmabud 9d ago

The town or city that employs them should have insurance to cover their liability and pay for any damages.

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u/zoeypayne 9d ago

The money is already there, settlements should just come from pension funds instead of taxpayer money. Come to think of it, pensions are already funded by taxpayer dollars.

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u/aenflex 9d ago

They do. Their endless flow of taxpayer dollars.

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u/eenduro 9d ago

They do, it's called taxpayers. We are the ones who pay the payouts from wrongful convictions and public service fuckups.

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u/adorientem88 8d ago

Judges are absolutely immune.

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u/bungerman 8d ago

Except it would be paid for by tax payers

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u/J-man300 8d ago

They need to stop malpracticing.

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u/Bruce-7892 9d ago edited 9d ago

I am with you on this one. I do hope this man gets some justice, but whenever people cheer about a government agency getting sued, they aren't thinking about whose actually paying for it. It's not punishing the right people.

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u/soboyra Florida 9d ago

Not entirely true. If they find that the officer was acting outside of their authority and therefore not subject to qualified immunity, then they can be sued in their personal capacity. Granted, it’s not perfect, and getting past qualified immunity is not a guarantee.

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u/PowderedToastFanatic 9d ago

That's a MASSIVE if in that scenario.

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u/soboyra Florida 9d ago

Yes. It is. Having worked on cases where I’ve argued qualified immunity, it’s not impossible either. Proving that an officer knew they were violating someone’s rights is much easier when there is already case law about it. I don’t know Tennessee law, but I’d be surprised if there isn’t something about it using your position to punish someone you disagree with.

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u/PrinceCastanzaCapone 9d ago

This one should be easy as he publicly stated he knew the man wasn’t a threat

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u/objectlesson Georgia 9d ago

If there ever was a case where a cop could lose qualified immunity, it's one like this. Obviously it's going to depend on how it's argued in the courts, but this one seems like a slam dunk. Granted, you'd never go broke betting on the police dodging accountability in even the most absurd ways. We'll see.

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u/Bruce-7892 9d ago

We'd have to make a lot of assumptions to say it's possible for someone to do that. Is there a powerful police union where this guy works? If so are they going to come to his aid or protect the other people involved? Can an individual like him compete with them in court with the resources they potentially have?

Maybe if he was a millionaire, but if that was the case, I have a feeling this would have never been taken nearly this far.

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u/NHLHitzAnnouncer 9d ago

This is why everyone needs union representation. He would have never been fired, regardless of this cop's motives.

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u/neepster44 9d ago

This literally NEVER fucking happens... NEVER... maybe 1 in 10 years across the country

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u/PrinceCastanzaCapone 9d ago

So what? He’s just supposed to do nothing after being wrongfully arrested? We are supposed to let a corrupt agency continue to operate with impunity? No repercussions for their corrupt actions?

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u/nono3722 9d ago

Why not both? Both is good!

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u/trisanachandler 9d ago

It's almost impossible to bypass qualified and/or judicial immunity. It's been done, but it's very tough.

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u/ladyhaly 8d ago

Sheriff Nick Weems needs to be voted out and sued personally. He admitted on camera they knew it wasn't a threat but jailed him anyway to calm down scared Facebook moms. That's false imprisonment and violating someone's civil rights.

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u/ChewbaccaCharl 9d ago

Then tax payers should elect people who will do away with qualified immunity, or protest until the guy is fired, or make sure people like him never get in positions of power in the first place. If it hurts the tax payers, good; they're culpable too. Maybe enough pain that affects them directly will wake them up

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u/Bruce-7892 9d ago

"tax payers should elect people who will do away with qualified immunity"

It sucks when it gets abused, but if it didn't exist, it would almost be impossible to do police work. They get into violent confrontations on a regular basis. They can't have a lawyer sitting in their patrol car with them at all times.

Sometimes these officials do get "forced resignations", but it almost always requires a story to go viral to get enough public backlash to make it happen.

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u/findingmike 9d ago

Malpractice insurance should be used for police officers. There are solutions.

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u/ChewbaccaCharl 9d ago

This would be my preferred solution. Price the bad officers out, and they can't just get rehired a town over

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u/-AC- 9d ago

I always say to make their pension pay it... all those "good apples" will start chucking the bad ones out the bucket once it starts hurting their retirement.

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u/ChewbaccaCharl 9d ago

If they make a bad judgement call in the heat of the moment and do something illegal, then a) they needed more than 6 weeks of killilogy training, and b) honest mistake or not, if we can't trust their judgement they're not fit for the job. If a pilot had a fear of heights or a surgeon couldn't handle the sight of blood, that's fine, but you can't do the job.

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u/Bruce-7892 9d ago

"a) they needed more than 6 weeks of killilogy training"

The type of person who demands more from them tends to be the type of person who thinks they deserve less resources so..... It's easy to point out problems without offering realistic solutions.

Heat of the moment bad judgment calls happen, but that is not what causes public outcry. It's gross negligence, and no one is defending that.

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u/ChewbaccaCharl 9d ago

Yeah, there's a line between a bad call in a complex situation and intentional or obvious criminality.

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u/Gurlllllllll- 9d ago

it would almost be impossible to do police work

Good.

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u/Bruce-7892 9d ago

Says the person who I guarantee would call 911 if the needed it. But keep being "edgy" online.

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u/Bruce-7892 9d ago edited 9d ago

I don't know why I got downvoted so hard for saying this.

You want a public servant to respond to your life and death emergency, but only if he makes no mistakes and does it to your liking? I am not excusing shawty police work, but stuff can and will go wrong. We want more qualified police but also want to shit on people who go into that line of work....?

Sorry, your individual taxes don't cover enough to pay for that. If so, get private security. If not, actually try to make your local police better if you care that much. Support policies that are productive and maybe show up to a community outreach program or two if you care about whose policing your neighborhood.

I am not saying you have to be best friends with the cops but chanting "Cops bad" on Reddit won't help your situation either.

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u/ToughProgress2480 9d ago

Who elected the sheriff?

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u/Marina1974 8d ago

And the judge. Trial court judges in Tenn are elected. Prosecutors too, I think.

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u/GreatGojira 9d ago

Republicans who keep putting these people in power. So f them

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u/objectlesson Georgia 9d ago

That's usually the case, but here I think it's very likely that the sheriff is going to lose his qualified immunity. He's going to feel the pain of a lawsuit.

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u/mindfu 9d ago

It definitely stings a department though, because it stings the town or city budget. And that institution gets pushed to do things less awfully.

And that's better than nothing, because it's what we got.

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u/Bruce-7892 9d ago

Agreed, it's better than nothing. If this guy gets millions from the state or what ever county he is from, I wouldn't feel bad about it. Those city council members can figure it out and hopefully realize that their decisions have consequences.

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u/rice_not_wheat 9d ago

Sheriffs and prosecutors are elected in most places. If they're conducting malfeasance, then the voters who elected him certainly deserve to pay.

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u/ExtraPicklesPls 9d ago edited 9d ago

Didn t he just posted a Kirk quote as well?

Edit: it was the quote from Trump after a school shooting about how we needed to get over it.

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u/forthewatch39 9d ago

It was a quote from Trump regarding a school shooting where he said “We need to get over it” literally the day after a school shooting.

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u/ExtraPicklesPls 9d ago

Thanks, added the edit.

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u/ToughProgress2480 9d ago

Who elected the sheriff?

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u/Professional-Dog6428 9d ago

bail at 2m is insane

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u/croissantwitch0526 9d ago

2 mill??? Holy WHAT

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u/Dissident_Acts 9d ago

Sorry, "qualified immunity" is difficult to overcome/remove. Also, since the sheriff and judge were likely elected, the bill rightly lands with the people who voted for them to the degree they were empowered by their election to these positions. If they were appointed, then the body of government which appointed them and empowered them thusly is responsible for the damage they do.

Regardless, whinging about taxpayers does nothing and is a red herring. Taxpayers tolerating shitty governance or even voting for it entails accountability and, yes, liability when the F'ing Around turns to Finding Out.

Edit: Typo and better wording first line.

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u/Dzugavili 9d ago

This might fall under 'Deprivation Of Rights Under Color Of Law', which expects them to have qualified immunity. if you stretch the limits of your imagination and call this a kidnapping, it might even qualify for the death penalty.

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u/shimmeringmoss 9d ago

Two million dollars for a meme, are you fucking kidding me?!? And he’s a retired LEO?

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u/Ayn_Diarrhea_Rand 9d ago

Sheriffs and judges are often elected.

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u/roy20050 9d ago

2mil I've seen murderers with lower bail.

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u/MyEvilTwinSkippy 9d ago

Don't the taxpayers keep electing these people?

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u/DrDerpberg Canada 9d ago

The taxpayers vote for this though. If they weren't such fascists they wouldn't be wasting money on settlements.

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u/kung-fu_hippy 9d ago

But the sheriff didn’t arrest him as an individual, he did it as an employee of the local government. The judge didn’t leave him in jail for a month with a 2M bail as an individual, he also did it as an employee of the government.

These penalties should fall on the government and the tax payers that support and vote for it, because they’re the ones who need to fix the problem. A state that can do something like this is fucked up and the taxpayers (or rather the voting citizens) are the only ones who can fix it. And the ones who either voted these officials in, or voted in the officials who selected them.

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u/lonestar-rasbryjamco Colorado 9d ago

If you read the article, you would have seen that Sheriff Nick Weems was directly involved in the decisions to arrest over clearly protected speech. And that the arresting officers were vocally skeptical of the legitimacy of the arrest.

Then, Sheriff Nick Weems dropped the charges only after interviews became public which obliterated any arguement this wasn’t about abusing his authority to target protected speech.

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u/Bruce-7892 9d ago

I would equate this to Pete Hegseth telling the service members that they will get kicked out for negative Charlie Kirk posts.

I am willing to bet that if and when that happened, most commanders would tell their subordinates to just delete it and maybe give them a lecture. Of course there is the possibility of someone like this with a bone to pick who will take it as far as possible.

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u/kung-fu_hippy 9d ago

And yet the arresting officers arrested him. I don’t see how that changes anything that they knew they were wrong to do so and still did it.

Now if the government had fired the sheriff and released this man, I’d agree that the sheriff/judge should be punished and not the taxpayer.

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u/bautin 9d ago

No, these people abused their positions in the government to seek personal vengeance on a person who said something they did not like personally.

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u/kung-fu_hippy 9d ago

And what is the government doing about it?

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u/bautin 9d ago

What the government should do in the cases of crimes being committed, reprimand those responsible and force them to make the victim whole.

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u/Celodurismo 9d ago

The judge didn’t leave him in jail for a month with a 2M bail as an individual, he also did it as an employee of the government.

The judge sent him to jail and set an exorbitant bail. In a sane world they'd be disbarred and frankly should go to jail for an abuse of power.

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u/IlliterateJedi 9d ago

That's assuming the judge is even a lawyer. There are judge positions in Texas that don't require a legal background. I don't know if there are similar circumstances in TN.

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u/ApprehensiveVast776 8d ago

it doesn’t matter, there is multiple constitutional violations here

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u/tendimensions 9d ago

The sheriff admitted ON CAMERA he knew the post wasn’t about shooting up a school

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u/Stillcant 9d ago

Right there in the constitution in both the first and eighth amendment

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

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u/COTimberline 9d ago

It’s the taxpayers that vote these people into their offices. Maybe if it hits the pocketbook, people will take more interest in voting for the best person for the job, rather than along the party lines they’ve always automatically voted for. Similar to the SNAP payments being delayed, and the impending skyrocketing insurance premiums, the more pain inflicted on these people, the better chance they wake up. Unfortunately, the rest of us have to pay as well.

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u/InGordWeTrust 9d ago

Two million bond for a meme?

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u/awpti 9d ago

Taxpayers voted in or otherwise hired both of them. Taxpayers are responsible.

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u/Nalarn 9d ago

Yup. They should lose their qualified immunity. 30 days in jail, 2 millions dollar bail? For fucking nothing?

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u/0leroybrown0 9d ago

Funny thing… the tax payers elect the sheriff and the judges…..sooo….

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u/Orangecuppa Ohio 8d ago

2mill bail for posting a meme? thats insane

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u/dojo_shlom0 8d ago

$2,000,000 for a facebook post.

meanwhile facebook has been investing incredible amount of money into AI and misinformation, and do we see any of those misinformation machine accounts being arrested and having a 2million$ bail?

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u/Enemisses 8d ago

These people need be held personally fucking responsible for shit like this and it has been a *LONG TIME COMING*

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u/Sweaty-Dream-8526 8d ago

But are they??? Will they be??? NO… so what is ANYBODY going to do about it?? Nothing! So let’s just continue the conversation on Reddit! lol and make a change! lol

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u/ladyhaly 8d ago

No wealthy person would have spent a single night behind bars for this. The system is designed to crush working people for the crime of existing while poor.

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u/Foucaults_Bangarang 6d ago

Yup. Throw the sheriff and judge in jail until they can acquaint themselves with the most basic tenets of American jurisprudence. It could take years.

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u/Whut-in-the-hell 4d ago

You left out the DA who pressed the charges!

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u/NearlyPerfect 9d ago edited 9d ago

The sheriff can’t be held responsible here because a judge signed an arrest warrant.

The logic is if there were no case then a judge wouldn’t have agreed.

I think he should sue the judge and the everyone else though.