Wyoming Supreme Court opens door for lawsuits against police officers, …

After the Wyoming Supreme Court created a way to sue police officers for negligent investigations, some state lawmakers took steps Friday to reverse that decision.

In one of its rare split decisions, the state’s highest court ruled 3-2 in March that suspects in criminal investigations can sue police officers for negligent investigation of a crime.

The three-judge majority said the Supreme Court had already recognized that officials had a duty of care to citizens and noted that “good actors” in law enforcement could still invoke qualified immunity if sued for negligent investigations.

The two dissenting justices said the majority jumped to the conclusion that police officers owed such a duty of care to their suspects, and subscribed to the theory that “anyone and everyone” — even a suspect’s employer — can now sue the officer for the way he investigated the crime. Civil courts can now also attribute blame to prosecutors who were merely exercising their local discretion in deciding whether and how to file charges, the dissent said.

Wyoming is now the only state in the Union that offers this special negligence claim in lawsuits against police officers.

Let us not

Most MPs voting at a meeting of the Joint Committee on Justice on Friday joined the dissenting opinion and voted to draft a law that would reverse the Supreme Court’s decision.

“There were several things that went wrong in this case, in several ways, and I think (the majority) wanted to punish what they believed were bad acts. I understand that. But I think what happened here was the obedience of a bad law,” Republican Rep. Ember Oakley of Riverton told the committee, referring to the criminal procedure underlying the Supreme Court’s decision. “(The result is) extremely dangerous territory for law enforcement.”

Oakley referred to an earlier statement by Torey Racines, who said he had spoken personally as an attorney and was familiar with the cases cited by the Supreme Court.

Racines predicts Wyoming will see more lawsuits in the future. He says officials can be held liable now if they choose not to investigate something, and the same situation can have dire consequences later.

Committee co-chair Art Washut (R-Casper) also pointed out that prosecutors’ decisions could now factor into negligence lawsuits, potentially stripping them of their discretion in the districts they were elected to serve.

“I can also imagine that prosecutors will be dragged to court in these civil cases,” said Washut. “I will support the motion.”

What a mess

Not everyone agreed with Oakley’s motion. The committee’s two Democratic delegates both explained why they voted against it.

Rep. Karlee Provenza (D-Laramie) disagreed with Oakley’s assertion that the majority decision was largely the result of a poorly handled case. The criminal case was explosive, but that does not absolve the Supreme Court of the need to review the officers’ potential negligence, she said.

Deborah Palm-Egle of Albin, Wyoming, sued the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation after a DCI investigator seized more than 700 pounds of her hemp plants and charged her with three drug offenses in 2019. Nine out of 10 of the seized plant samples sent for lab testing showed THC levels just above the legal limit of 0.3%, which would classify them as marijuana, not hemp. The judge dismissed the case in 2020 for lack of probable cause, finding that Palm-Egle had posed as a hemp expert and that the low THC levels reflected an intent to grow hemp, not marijuana.

The dismissal was wrong, Judge Keith Kautz argued in a footnote to his dissent, because the crime of drug possession does not depend on a person’s specific intent.

The Prosecutor was reprimanded in 2021 for failing to correct an investigator’s erroneous testimony in a court hearing.

“(The disasters) may have had some influence on that decision, not in a flawed way, but perhaps in a way that made sense to the court,” Provenza said. “If the state apparently failed to make a case that should have been pursued based on the facts at hand, and instead they lied under oath, I don’t know why we need to enact a law that has far-reaching implications (and protections) for the conduct of these people.”

Pendulum

Rep. Ken Chestek (D-Laramie) also voted against Oakley’s motion.

While it is dangerous to simply allow anyone to sue police officers for negligence, it is equally dangerous to excuse the negligence of investigators, says Chestek.

The majority opinion is the better compromise, he added, because it still gives officials the opportunity to invoke their limited immunity in the event of a lawsuit.

Sarah Kellogg, president of the Wyoming Trial Lawyers Association, stressed that the remaining defense of qualified immunity is a “great protection” that allows officers to get out of a trial early if their conduct meets the standards of that defense.

Even after this ruling, it is still difficult to bring a case against government officials to court, she said.

Claire McFarland can be reached at [email protected].