Source: Los Angeles Times
“U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. slammed the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals this week over its handling of a California police shooting case, calling lower courts’ decision to award damages to the victim’s widow and children ‘a flagrant error.’ ‘The courts below badly fumbled this basic tenet of our qualified immunity doctrine,’ by relying in part on a 2022 appellate decision to rule the officer was not shielded from liability in the 2017 shooting, Alito wrote, dissenting in the Supreme Court’s decision to not take the case. Jacob Dominguez was unarmed and complying with officers’ instructions when San Jose Police Sgt. Michael Pina shot and killed him during a traffic stop in 2017. … Pina’s lawyers argued that he and the San Jose Police Department were protected under qualified immunity, a legal principle that shields government officials from most civil suits.” (02/27/25)