This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
The Supreme Court has refused to hold accountable police officers who exhibited "reckless" behavior by arresting and detaining the wrong man – twice.
At the second arrest, they jailed the innocent bystander for three days before they bothered to investigate his identity through which they eventually confirmed he was not wanted.
Officials with the Rutherford Institute, who worked on the case involving David Sosa, called the decision by the justices not to take up the case a "blow to due process safeguards."
"Although David Sosa shares the same name as a man from another state named in an outstanding warrant more than 20 years old, he has a different date of birth, height, weight, and social security number, and did not have any tattoos, unlike the suspect listed in the warrant," Rutherford's report explained.
"Nevertheless, police failed to take the necessary, fundamental steps to confirm Sosa’s identity before arresting and jailing him."
The organization explained to the high court "if police are not held accountable for violating Sosa’s rights, then nothing will deter law enforcement officers from wrongfully arresting him over and over again or from committing similar reckless behavior toward other innocent citizens."
"What this case shows is that we have no real due process," constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of "Battlefield America: The War on the American People," said in the organization's report on the case.
"If the powers-that-be want to lock you up, then you’ll be locked up, whether you’re innocent or guilty, with no access to the protections our Constitution provides."
The institute's explanation of the case background:
In 2014, David Sosa was stopped for a traffic violation by a sheriff’s deputy for Martin County, Florida, which is where Sosa lived. Sosa worked in research and development of airplane engines. The deputy discovered an arrest warrant for a “David Sosa” from 22 years earlier out of Texas for selling crack cocaine. Even though Sosa had a different date of birth, height, weight, and social security number, and did not have any tattoos as listed for the accused in the warrant, the deputy arrested him anyway. After three hours, the sheriff’s department confirmed Sosa was not the same person named in the warrant and released him. However, four years later, another deputy from the same department made a traffic stop on Sosa and found the same outstanding warrant. Once again, despite the identifying information on the warrant not matching his description and Sosa informing the deputy about the previous misidentification incident, the deputy arrested Sosa on the same warrant. But this time the jail held Sosa for three days before taking just a few minutes to run his fingerprints to confirm his identity and release him.
But the trial court dismissed the case, the 11th Circuit fell in line with that, and now the Supreme Court has let those decisions stand.
