Officers get qualified immunity for arrestee who was alleged to have resisted booking and was removed, while handcuffed behind his back, to an intake cell with a concrete bed, and he hit the floor with his face when “pushed” down. Raddant v. Douglas Cty., 2026 U.S. App. LEXIS 7380 (7th Cir. Mar. 12, 2026)* [I quoted a lot of this one because I tried a criminal case against a jailer a lot like this. Directed verdict. They will take you down to the floor. That happened in my case, but my client wasn’t even there when it happened. His was in the cell later.]:
There is no doubt that the videos support a conclusion that Raddant appeared to be an obnoxious, loudmouthed, irritating arrestee who refused to stop arguing when instructed. Fourth Amendment law, however, assumes that police officers have thick skin, and does not tolerate force used out of frustration or impatience. Unlike loud mouthiness and obnoxiousness, on the other hand, physical resistance and threats to officer safety can justify the use of force, as do threats of future physical actions. And so, for example, when an officer at the booking desk asked Larson and Libby whether she should call for assistance, and Raddant responded “Yea, you better,” the officers were entitled to take his threat of future resistance seriously and take action accordingly. … Likewise, the officers’ assessment of the use of force may also have been altered by Raddant’s statement that if the officers continued to twist his arm “we’re going to have issues.” … We focus, therefore, only on Raddant’s acts of physical resistance or threats of such acts, as opposed to his refusal to follow commands like “stop talking,” or “be quiet,” and other verbal annoyances.
. . .
But the video does not leave any viable material issues for a jury to consider. What we see is not the use of excessive force, but an unfortunate accident at best, or clumsiness, at worst. Could all of this have been avoided by lowering Raddant’s agitation rather than ramping it up by engaging with his cacophonic complaints? Possibly. But excessive force cases are not opportunities for courts to opine on judges’ interpretations of what police officers might have done better or differently. Our only role is to assess whether the force purposely or knowingly used against Raddant was objectively unreasonable from the standpoint of a reasonable officer’s best assessment of the situation at hand. Kingsley, 576 U.S. at 397.
. . .
But even if the argument has not been waived, we can determine from watching all three relevant videos in slow motion that no reasonable juror could conclude that the officers used excessive force while turning Raddant around from the booking desk before walking him down the hall. … Raddant was not cooperating with the officers and the officers needed to move him to a cell to complete their search. The three videos from three different angles show the three seconds in which the officers are turning Raddant around and removing him from the booking area. From those we can see that Libby is holding Raddant by the upper arm and Larson is holding Raddant by the forearm. Id. Neither officer is grabbing Raddant by the wrist or handcuffs. Id. Just as Libby yells “Go,” Johnston puts his hand on Raddant’s shoulder and starts to pull him back and turn him around. … It is clear that most of the force of the turn comes from Johnston’s grasp on Raddant’s shoulder. Id. In fact, Libby lets go of Raddant’s arm almost immediately. … We see only very minor force used to turn Raddant around. In sum, there are no material fact disputes about excessive force that warrant trial.
"If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. It isn't, and they don't." —Me
"Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well." –Josh Billings (pseudonym of Henry Wheeler Shaw), Josh Billings on Ice, and Other Things (1868) (erroneously attributed to Robert Louis Stevenson, among others)
“I am still learning.” —Domenico Giuntalodi (but misattributed to Michelangelo Buonarroti (common phrase throughout 1500's)).
"Love work; hate mastery over others; and avoid intimacy with the government."
—Shemaya, in the Thalmud
"It is a pleasant world we live in, sir, a very pleasant world. There are bad people in it, Mr. Richard, but if there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers."
—Charles Dickens, “The Old Curiosity Shop ... With a Frontispiece. From a Painting by Geo. Cattermole, Etc.” 255 (1848)
"A system of law that not only makes certain conduct criminal, but also lays down rules for the conduct of the authorities, often becomes complex in its application to individual cases, and will from time to time produce imperfect results, especially if one's attention is confined to the particular case at bar. Some criminals do go free because of the necessity of keeping government and its servants in their place. That is one of the costs of having and enforcing a Bill of Rights. This country is built on the assumption that the cost is worth paying, and that in the long run we are all both freer and safer if the Constitution is strictly enforced." —Williams v. Nix, 700 F. 2d 1164, 1173 (8th Cir. 1983) (Richard Sheppard Arnold, J.), rev'd Nix v. Williams, 467 US. 431 (1984).
"The criminal goes free, if he must, but it is the law that sets him free. Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws, or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence." —Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 659 (1961).
"Any costs the exclusionary rule are costs imposed directly by the Fourth Amendment."
—Yale Kamisar, 86 Mich.L.Rev. 1, 36 n. 151 (1987).
"There have been powerful hydraulic pressures throughout our history that bear heavily on the Court to water down constitutional guarantees and give the police the upper hand. That hydraulic pressure has probably never been greater than it is today." — Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 39 (1968) (Douglas, J., dissenting).
"The great end, for which men entered into society, was to secure their property." —Entick v. Carrington, 19 How.St.Tr. 1029, 1066, 95 Eng. Rep. 807 (C.P. 1765)
"It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have frequently been forged in controversies involving not very nice people. And so, while we are concerned here with a shabby defrauder, we must deal with his case in the context of what are really the great themes expressed by the Fourth Amendment." —United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56, 69 (1950) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting)
"The course of true law pertaining to searches and seizures, as enunciated here, has not–to put it mildly–run smooth." —Chapman v. United States, 365 U.S. 610, 618 (1961) (Frankfurter, J., concurring).
"A search is a search, even if it happens to disclose nothing but the bottom of a turntable." —Arizona v. Hicks, 480 U.S. 321, 325 (1987)
"For the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection. ... But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected." —Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351 (1967)
“Experience should teach us to be most on guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.” —United States v. Olmstead, 277 U.S. 438, 479 (1925) (Brandeis, J., dissenting)
“Liberty—the freedom from unwarranted intrusion by government—is as easily lost through insistent nibbles by government officials who seek to do their jobs too well as by those whose purpose it is to oppress; the piranha can be as deadly as the shark.” —United States v. $124,570, 873 F.2d 1240, 1246 (9th Cir. 1989)
"You can't always get what you want / But if you try sometimes / You just might find / You get what you need." —Mick Jagger & Keith Richards, Let it Bleed (album, 1969)
"In Germany, they first came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Catholic. Then they came for me–and by that time there was nobody left to speak up."
—Martin Niemöller (1945) [he served seven years in a concentration camp]
“Children grow up thinking the adult world is ordered, rational, fit for purpose. It’s crap. Becoming a man is realising that it’s all rotten. Realising how to celebrate that rottenness, that’s freedom.” – John le Carré, The Night Manager (1993), line by Richard Roper
"The point of the Fourth Amendment, which often is not grasped by zealous officers, is not that it denies law enforcement the support of the usual inferences which reasonable men draw from evidence. Its protection consists in requiring that those inferences be drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime." —Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 13-14 (1948)
The book was dedicated in the first (1982) and sixth (2025) editions to Justin William Hall (1975-2025). He was three when this project started in 1978.
