The police chief in Baton Rouge, Louisiana apologized on Feb. 13 after an officer used an anti-sodomy statute that had been ruled unconstitutional to arrest two men who were having consensual sex, The Advocate newspaper reported Monday.
Police Chief Carl Dabadie also issued a memo to all officers reminding them not to arrest people using the old statute, The Advocate reported.
A Baton Rouge police officer arrested the two men on Feb. 12, after he saw them allegedly having sex in a car in a park, according to the newspaper. They were charged with trespassing in the park and “crimes against nature,” according to The Advocate. A judge threw out the latter charge, according to The Advocate.
“The officers made a mistake,” police department spokesman Jonny Dunnam told The Advocate. “The chief wants to send his apologies to those individuals.”
The Supreme Court invalidated anti-sodomy laws in 2003, the newspaper noted.
Hey, chief, how about, oh I don’t know, maybe training your officers in the law? Then again, he probably doesn’t care seeing as how the Roberts Supreme Court has ruled that police ignorance of the law doesn’t matter.
I have a sneaky suspicion that those officers were totally aware of the law …
100% guaranteed he thought he was creating an opportunity to re-litigate the issue. The GOP/Teatrolls and Christian fundies are all about fabricating lawsuits to try to destroy the principle of stare decisis in this country. Nothing shall “remain decided” unless they like it.
Exactly right. And they presumably arrested the men under that law in an attempt to humiliate them publicly. IMO there should be sanctions against police, judges, and prosecutors who force people to defend themselves against this type of bogus charge.
That said, I don’t have much sympathy for people who have sex in parks, regardless of their sexuality. How do you suppose some mother is supposed to explain that to her 5-year old? Areas with high sex activity in public parks keep families and others who don’t want to see that stuff from being able to use taxpayer-funded resources.
Maybe so; but one thing I’d be a lot more sure about is that this public apology is being done pursuant to legal advice to the La. police about how they’re exposed to a civil lawsuit.
One of the many, many crappy things the Republican majority SCOTUS has succeeded in bringing about is a twisting of the original, understandable and practically enforceable line of legal authority that holds employer companies responsible as ‘principal’ for the bullshit things done by the managers and authorized employees of those companies. The new regime seems to imply, particularly with public agencies like law enforcement, that unless the public agency somehow formally passed an eyes-wide-open policy, such as in this case, to effectively positively direct the arrest of people having sex with a person of the same gender, then the agency itself may not be held vicariously liable for the harm done, and more practically the damages awarded by a jury.
As a practical matter, tho, the SCOTUS majority’s twisterama approach has big problems: it’s caused police unions and other police collective bargaining agents and their lawyers to insist on independent vicarious liability coverage for officers successfully sued for these sorts of wrongs. And that, I strongly suspect, is what’s going on here: the La. force is trying to limit it’s needless exposure to additional damages for failing to acknowledge that something wrong happened, on the basis that to do otherwwise, that is, to REFRAIN from issuing such an apology, would open up the defendants to further damages for willful violation of the constitutional rights of these defendants and aimed at preventing by pre-punishing further and future such wrongs by the La. force and its employee officers.