Brenna Goddard

I think this does mark a significant shift for the country and is potentially setting up

an escalating conflict between states and the federal government in a way that we haven't seen in a long time.

They do not have immunity that is that broad.

Federal officers do have some immunity, but it is not absolute immunity for things that they do on the job.

They still have to comply with federal laws.

They still have to act in a reasonable way in carrying out their duties and not violate people's rights.

So the state, or in this case it would likely be Hennepin County prosecutors, could file criminal charges against the officer involved if they think they have enough evidence there.

And then that officer would likely claim federal immunity and try to get the case moved to federal court and try to get the charges thrown out based on claims of federal immunity.

And from there, it would just depend on what the federal court decided of whether the case could proceed.

And if it did, then state and local prosecutors would go ahead and take that case to trial in federal court for a state law crime.

We have seen some cases take years to resolve on this immunity issue.

For example, the 1992 Ruby Ridge incident where a federal sniper shot and killed an unarmed woman.

That took place in 1992, and it wasn't until 2001 that the Ninth Circuit ultimately ruled that that case could go ahead and that that officer didn't necessarily have immunity from the state criminal prosecution in that.

So these are not easy cases, and I don't want to overstate the ability of states to win these cases.

We have seen repeatedly that federal courts will throw out charges if the federal courts think that the officer is acting reasonably well.

and carrying out their federal duties in a reasonable way.

But states have succeeded in getting these cases to trial in cases where the facts were sufficiently disputed and the federal court agreed that it wasn't clear that the officer was acting with lawful force.

So that's really the big hurdle here is if the state can show that there is enough question around the reasonableness of this officer's actions in order to get over that immunity hurdle.

This administration is, first of all, trying to say that states don't even have the power to bring these types of cases, which is just flatly wrong based on this long history of states bringing this exact type of case.

And the federal government is definitely trying to spin the narrative in a certain way so that the officer would be able to more easily claim immunity.