Handling a Case Against The Police –


An Overview by Terrell N. Roberts, III


Terrell N. Roberts, III (Roberts & Wood) was admitted to practice in Maryland in 1978. He concentrates his practice on civil litigation. He has extensive experience in trying civil cases against police officers and municipalities for claims of excessive force, false arrest, and malicious prosecution. He is married and has four children.


The most inspiring statement I have


read about the Fourth Amendment was written by Justice Robert Jackson. Af- ter reciting the language of the Fourth Amendment, he said: These, I protest, are not mere second- class rights but belong in the catalog of indispensable freedoms. Among deprivations of rights, none is so effec- tive in cowing a population, crushing the spirit of the individual and putting terror in every heart. Uncontrolled search and seizure is one of the first and most effective weapons in the arsenal of every arbitrary government.1 Justice Jackson had prosecuted Nazi


war criminals at Nuremberg, and when 1


Brinegar v. Unites States, 338 U.S. 160, 180, 69 S.Ct. 1302, 93 L.Ed. 1879 (1949).


he penned these words (in a dissenting opinion) he had good reason to know how a whole population of people can be made to bend to the will of a few men. The work of protecting our cherished constitutional freedoms is an important one. A lawyer serves an indispensable role in that process. As the Supreme Court has noted: “If the citizen does not have the resources [a lawyer], his day in court is denied him; the congressional policy [enforcement of constitutional rights] which he seeks to assert and vindicate goes unvindicated; and the entire Nation, not just the individual citizen, suffers.”2 Many police officers are never pros- ecuted or disciplined for police abuse.


2


City of Riverside v. Rivera, 477 U.S. 561, 575, 106 S.Ct. 2886 (1986).


There is a need for more lawyers to take these cases. If you can do so, you will fulfill the fundamental role of a lawyer in our country to protect our most cherished rights. The case should be selected on the


strength of the evidence that a constitu- tional violation was committed, not on the basis of the status of the plaintiff. You don’t need to represent an eagle scout in order to win the case. Indeed, victims of police abuse are often not pillars of the community. As the late Judge K. K. Hall of the Fourth Circuit aptly stated: But Casella was a criminal. He deserved to be arrested and punished; his story stirs little sympathy, much less outrage, in the crowd. The courts cannot be so impassive. We must always remember that unreasonable searches and sei- zures helped drive our forefathers to revolution. One who would defend the Fourth Amendment must share his foxhole with scoundrels of every sort, but to abandon the post because of poor company is to sell freedom cheaply.3 At the outset, one must recognize that


in the minds of many there is a natural belief that police officers act lawfully. And in most instances they do. In a country founded on law, a citizen should have the right to expect that a police officer will act within the bounds of law. But it is also true that citizens today are not programmed to believe that a police of- ficer can do no wrong. I have found that jurors will not condone law breaking by police officers anymore than they would condone illegal conduct by anyone else. An arrest or prosecution which has no legal justification, the use of excessively brutal and unreasonable force, a flagrantly illegal and unreasonable search, or engag- ing in other forms of misconduct are not going to pass muster with jurors. In deciding whether to take a case against the police, it is sometimes readily


(Continued on page 20) 3


Kopf v. Skyrm, 993 F. 2d 374, 379-80 (4th Cir. 1993).


18 Trial Reporter Winter 2007


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