Appeals court: Unconstitutional to frame prison inmates for crimes they didn't commit

So, a pair of men who were already in prison were charged with additional crimes, but it turns out that this was due a lying informant. The men filed a civil rights lawsuit, claiming that the agents in charge of the case knew the informant was lying. It seems that: 1) the defendants argued "we didn't know, but even if we had known it would have been okay because it's totally legal to frame people for crimes they didn't commit if they're already in prison", and 2) a lower court bought this argument and dismissed this case. An appeals court overturned the dismissal and is allowing the lawsuit to proceed:

Quote:

Price pleaded guilty to specific state-law drug and gun offenses and agreed to be imprisoned only for those offenses. To the extent that he forfeited any Fourth Amendment rights by pleading guilty, he did not forfeit his Fourth Amendment right to be free from imprisonment for unrelated crimes that he did not commit. In addition to fugitives like Price, every inmate in state and federal prisons is serving a term of imprisonment following conviction for an offense. Under the district court’s reasoning, each of these inmates would also have forfeited all of his Fourth Amendment rights regarding false imprisonment and malicious prosecution, and the government would have free rein to frame any of them for any other crime. Neither precedent nor common sense supports this outcome. While inmates have a diminished expectation of privacy, see Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520, 557, 99 S. Ct. 1861, 60 L. Ed. 2d 447 (1979), they retain their Fourth Amendment right to be free from searches and seizures that are objectively unreasonable in light of those diminished expectations. See, e.g., Cornwell v. Dahlberg, 963 F.2d 912, 916 (6th Cir. 1992). Because it is objectively unreasonable to frame an inmate, we reverse the district court’s judgment and hold that Price properly alleged that he suffered an injury-in-fact when government agents allegedly framed and maliciously prosecuted him for a crime that he did not commit.

There's a little more background at this news article.

via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/1Gziht0