Confronting Racial Injustice Series: Police Misconduct and Qualified Immunity

This program is Part 2 of a three-part Symposium sponsored by the Committee on Mandated Representation as part of its mission to further the goal of ensuring quality mandated representation. Each Symposium Part will address aspects of criminal defense where racial disparity is a factor. 

Police misconduct harms criminal defendants and undermines racial justice. Discovery reform and the repeal of Civil Rights Law § 50-a were promising steps, but hurdles have been erected to the broad availability of misconduct records to defense counsel. This part of the program will detail the legal landscape and offer strategies to obtain such records.

The doctrine of qualified immunity has long shielded police and municipalities from accountability for egregious misconduct and has denied relief to plaintiffs in civil rights action. This part of the program will provide a historical context, basic principles of qualified immunity, current case law, and the movement toward reform.