This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, July 15, 2022.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The Supreme Court handled and notably chose not to take many cases involving

accountability for the criminal justice system.

Cato's J. Schweicherd and Clark Neely sum up the most recent term at the high court.

We spoke earlier in the Supreme Court term about at least one case that had implications for

criminal justice, now that the term is over, what can we say with confidence about this Supreme

Court term with respect to a what can we say with confidence about this Supreme Court

Durham with respect to accountability for police?

So overall, this is a pretty discouraging term

in terms of police accountability. There are really three major cases that the court decided

involving police accountability and then a set of cases that they didn't decide involving qualified immunity, which is obviously a huge central

component of the police accountability problem. Out of all of those, there was really only one case

that could be plausibly called a win for the ability of citizens to

vindicate their rights against police officers who violate them.

All right, so let's take those in turn.

The one that we had discussed previously.

Right, the one that we discussed previously is a case called Thompson versus Clark,

which involves what are called malicious prosecution claims under Section 1983.

In other words, when police officers unlawfully

arrest someone without probable cause

and then subject them to criminal proceedings.

...