Cops steal money during search; 9th circuit says ok?!

The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled the Fresno police officials accused of stealing over $225,000 while executing a search warrant are protected by qualified immunity and so can't be prosecuted within the episode.

Even though the unanimous panel acknowledged that"the City Officers ought To have recognized that the alleged theft was morally wrong," it reasoned that they"did not have clear notice that it violated the Fourth Amendment." To put it differently, the cops were not armed with sufficient information to deduce that robbing individuals is a breach of the constitutional rights against unreasonable searches and seizures--an odd interpretation of the legislation, to say the very least.

In 2013, the Fresno Police Department completed a raid on Micah Jessop and Brittan Ashjian, that have been suspected of running illegal Gaming machines. (Neither man was charged.) Upon finishing the Hunt, officers supplied with a ledger claiming that they had Seized $50,000; Jessop and Ashjian allege that, in fact, the cops Made with $151,380 in money and $125,000 in rare coins. Both guys Assert that the officers pocketed the gap between the capital Reported using the merit and the entire quantity that they required, amounting to some $226,380 theft.