When Truth is a Casualty

In the United States, our constitution protects the rights of the individual from the abuses of government overreach.

Rights like those granted under the 1st (free speech, freedom to assemble, and the right to petition for redress of a grievance), the 4th (freedom from unreasonable search and seizures), and 14th Amendments (right to due process and equal protection). 

The strength of our constitution, in protecting the rights it confers, has been a defining reason for our success as a nation.

But, overt government overreach is making enforcing those rights harder to do.

Where does that leave us as a nation if those rights only exist on paper? No better than Iran, Russia, or China, or any other country where the government acts with impunity.

When the government intentionally eliminates these checks on government overreach, we, as a nation, head down a very slippery slope.

A Slippery Slope 

The shooting death of Renee Nicole Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis, and especially the subsequent government response to that shooting, brings us right to the edge of that slippery slope. 

This shouldn’t come as a surprise. Politics, not facts, now dictates who gets investigated and prosecuted. And despite liberal and conservative supreme court judges publicly opposing qualified immunity, the supreme court has shirked the responsibility of honestly assessing the extent to which qualified immunity actually encourages government misconduct.

Good’s family has hired a law firm. With the large amount of video of the killing, the supreme court may finally get the case that forces a reckoning on qualified immunity.

Investigations are fundamentally about the search for the truth. At least that’s what they are supposed to be about. 

But what happens when government investigations are suppressed, or worse, selectively manipulated, with the intent to distort the truth. Or worse, to actively punish those who speak the truth? 

The Fallout When Facts Are No Longer Facts 

What happens to the effectiveness of investigations when facts are no longer facts, but are now politics dependent?

And if that’s the case, can the results of any investigation be trusted? 

Investigating civil rights violations in a law enforcement shooting previously fell to the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, and through litigation brought by criminal defense and civil plaintiff attorneys.

Investigations could also be brought by state and local law enforcement too.

The DOJ even used to go to court to get consent decrees against law enforcement departments when there was a pattern of civil rights violations.

Sidelining of DOJ’s Civil Rights Division

But, the DOJ’s civil rights division has been sidelined from its role in civil rights enforcement. And that happened even before the shooting. Its budget was cut, its most experienced attorneys fired or resigned, and its resources redirected to other areas.

And since the DOJ blocked an investigation into Good’s shooting death, and began an investigation into Good’s wife, 4 of the highest ranking legal professionals in the civil rights division quit in protest.   

And 6 career federal prosecutors in Minnesota quit too. Including those who were investigation the allegations of fraud that led to surging ICE into the state.

When moral, ethical, people of good conscience, like these 10 quit, their positions are filled with those who lack those qualities. Lackeys whose fealty is to a specific political outcome or person rather than to our rights.

These changes have essentially stoped the DOJ from enforcing rights some of our most fundamental rights.

False Narrative to Mislead the Public 

This wasn’t by accident, as the head of the DOJ made multiple inflammatory statements about Good, labeling her a “domestic terrorist”, in order to sway public opinion. 

Definitely not the way to gain the people’s trust. Rather than search for the facts and let the chips fall where they may, the DOJ engaged in politics. 

While withholding evidence from state and local law enforcement, DOJ released to a conservative influencer video from the shooting by the agent who shot Good using his own cell phone. (How dangerous a situation could it have been if he was holding a cell phone in his hand and using it to video?) 

The intent behind the release was to spin the contents of the video into a justification for the shooting.

The video that the DOJ released didn’t achieve that result, depicting Good as smiling, and speaking politely to the officer. It also recorded someone directing a slur at her after she’d been shot dead. 

Meanwhile, the president justified the shooting of Good because she was “disrespectful”. He’s now threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act, not on behalf of state government as the act requires, but in opposition to the wishes of state government.

The Insurrection Act is supposed to be invoked to help state government when faced with an in insurrection against state government. In Minnesota protestors are not targeting state government. Rather they’re opposing what they see as a federal government out of control. 

The Challenges to Bringing a Civil Rights Case

I conducted hundreds of civil rights related investigations for civil plaintiff and criminal defense attorneys in my 30 years of doing case preparation investigations.

Civil rights cases have never been easy to win. Qualified immunity and juror biases are two significant barriers to successfully litigating them. 

But, there were many successes in those cases that I worked on, and I’ve outlined the approaches I used to conduct investigations in my book, Effective Litigation Investigations. You can learn more here. 

I worked on dozens of law enforcement shooting, and use of force cases, cases during my 30+ years of conducting case preparation investigations. In 2011 alone, I investigated 7 different law enforcement shooting cases.

When it comes to police shootings, police typically claim fear for safety as a justification for the shooting. One of the key elements of an investigation is determining if that justification for the shooting was legitimate, or a pretext. 

In one case I worked, the police claimed that the shooting took place because a vehicle was used as a weapon. But, eyewitness statements showed that to be a pretext, and the case was settled. 

I also worked with a special prosecutor, prosecuting two police officers over the shooting death of a homeless man, who was shot dead while camping on city property in violation of city ordinances. 

When he was shot dead, the man’s tent was just feet from federal land where camping on public land was legal.

The special prosecutor and I had worked together on a civil case, where a young man suffering from a variety of mental health issues was shot dead in his family’s own backyard, while wearing his pajamas. We took that case to trial on the strength of eyewitness testimony and won.

Facts mattered in those and the other cases that I worked on.

But, will facts matter in the shooting death of Renee Nicole Good? And if not. Will they matter again at some point in the future?

The government’s efforts to frame the narrative of the shooting politically has worked to some extent. At least as far as its staunchest supporters. 

But whether that approach works with the broader population too, will go a long ways towards showing whether facts matter any more.

From my own experience investigating law enforcement shootings, and watching multiple videos shot of the incident, including the agent’s own footage, I don’t see a basis for a justification for the shooting. 

I see the actions of an agent who was either poorly trained, and escalated without necessity, or who did not belong in the field.

I find it telling that he was in the process of videotaping with his own phone, as an indication that he wasn’t focused on what he was doing, or didn’t feel there was much of a safety threat.

But, unless and until, there’s a legitimate investigation into the incident, and the full facts are brought out, we’re all left to wonder what went south.

And at this point, I believe the most likely avenue for such an investigation will come not from the government, but from a private attorney.

I’ve outlined the approaches I used to conduct investigations in my book, Effective Litigation Investigations. Click on the link to learn more.