A judge who personally took two innocent children from a hallway outside his courtroom and escorted them to a nearby jail, where they “were forced to remove some of their clothing and sit in separate jail cells” now wants to escape liability for the apparent violation of their constitutional rights.
Judge Eric Eighmy, of Taney County court in Missouri, already has lost once at the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals when he demanded to be held faultless for his personal attack on Kadan and Brooklyn Rockett. The judges there first ruled he was not qualified for judicial immunity “because judges have no authority to moonlight as jailers.”
Back in the courtroom where the children were seeking damages from him personally, he now insists that he has “qualified immunity,” a doctrine that protects government officials from being held personally liable for constitutional violations as long as the right was not “clearly established.”
It is the Institute for Justice that has filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the appeals panel now on behalf of the children.
“The last time this case came up on appeal, Judge Eighmy asked the court to expand judicial immunity to completely shield him from accountability for violating the constitutional rights of two children, Kadan and Brooklyn Rockett. The court declined that invitation,” the brief explains. “Now, Judge Eighmy asks the court to expand a different immunity doctrine—qualified immunity—to invalidate a jury verdict in the Rocketts’ favor.
“Again, the court should decline. Cases like this one highlight the practical and jurisprudential perils of qualified immunity. Time and time again, defendants invoke the doctrine to escape accountability for egregious constitutional violations, so long as no identical case exists in a binding jurisdiction. Some courts allow this gambit to work. Others rightly see through it, finding instead that obvious constitutional abuses can be remedied without carbon-copy precedent presaging the exact violation at issue.
“This second approach—the one this court should follow—is more consistent with the Supreme Court’s guidance that qualified immunity is inappropriate in the face of ‘particularly egregious facts[,].’”
The institute explains qualified immunity does not protect an officer “where the constitutional violation was so obvious under general well-established constitutional principles that any reasonable officer would have known the conduct was unconstitutional.”
Those are the circumstances in this case, the IJ reported.
The case already has had a jury verdict, in favor of the children, but Eighmy insists on overturning that ruling.
“Every reasonable American knows that it’s unconstitutional for a sitting judge to take off his robe, descend from the bench, and throw innocent children in prison,” said IJ Attorney Dylan Moore.
“Qualified immunity shouldn’t exist to begin with, but it certainly shouldn’t protect such obvious violations of the Fourth Amendment.”
The case dates to 2019 when the family was in court for a custody hearing.
The parents decided, in court, “that the kids would go home with their mother that day.”
Outside the courtroom, the children argued, expressing a desire to go home with their father.
“Eighmy injected himself into the children’s disagreement with their mother. When the kids stood their ground, Judge Eighmy escorted them to a nearby detention center. There, at Judge Eighmy’s direction, the Rocketts were forced to remove some of their clothing and sit in separate jail cells for about an hour. Judge Eighmy eventually returned, and the children agreed to leave with their mom—but only after the judge threatened to throw them in foster care, where they would never see their family again,” the institute explained.
The father then sued Eighmy for violating the Fourth Amendment.
First Eighmy tried the judicial immunity claim, and lost.
The next step was a jury trial, where a jury ruled the kids were entitled to $5,000 each in damages, from the judge personally.
So Eighmy now is claiming qualified immunity protections.
“Immunity doctrines should not shield government officials from accountability when they clearly violate people’s constitutional rights, as Judge Eighmy did here,” said IJ lawyer Anya Bidwell. “For years, Judge Eighmy has been trying to hide behind different immunity doctrines, despite the fact that this court has already ruled he isn’t protected by judicial immunity.”
The filing notes the Supreme Court repeatedly has admonished against the expansion of protections for officials “whose actions were plainly incompetent, knowingly illegal, or obviously unconstitutional.”
The judge’s claims apparently rest on the fact that no judge before ever had intervened in a family argument, taken two children into custody and jailed them, meaning there was no “precedent” that such actions were obviously wrong.
“The children were never suspected of committing a crime. Judge Eighmy never initiated contempt proceedings against them. And the children were not free to leave their jail cells until they agreed to Judge Eighmy’s terms. Instead, Judge Eighmy leveraged his position of state authority to circumvent the very legal process he was charged with administering, detaining two innocent minors because he was unhappy with their reaction to being stuck in the middle of an acrimonious custody dispute,” the filing points out.