I was put in jail for 17 months because an
officer lied about me.
When you're sent to federal prison as an innocent person
it's nearly impossible to get justice, even when a
court finds that a police officer's lies sent you there.
Hamdi Mohamud is a Somali refugee.
In 2011, when Hamdi was 16, she was headed to the mall
with two friends when they ran into a third girl who
then attacked the girls.
The girl who attacked Hamdi and her friends, as it
turned out, was actually a witness in an ongoing,
but bogus investigation being run by a crooked
cop named Heather Weyker.
When Hamdi and her friends called the police, the
attacker called Heather Weyker to get herself out of
trouble and Heather Weyker to protect her witness, had
Hamdi and her friends arrested and charged with serious
crimes to make sure that her witness got away scot-free.
I was surprised.
Um, I kept thinking all, this is just a mistake.
Officer Weyker then doubled down on her lies and deceit
and filed a false affidavit to have Hamdi and her friends
charged with a federal crime of tampering with a witness.
As a result, Hamdi spent about two years in federal
custody before Weyker's case fell apart and the
charges were dismissed.
All of this, even though Hamdi had committed no crime.
Personally, I wouldn't wish jail on my worst enemy.
If you're actually innocent, then you don't deserve that.
There was nothing I could have done different because
I did nothing wrong.
You don't have to take my word for it.
More than one federal appellate court has held that
Heather Weyker lied to keep Hamdi and her friends in jail.
I guess you could say I was at the wrong time,
at the wrong place.
Um, I guess the officer felt like she needed a win and
she used me to get that win.
She didn't care whether or how that would
affect me and my family.
Hamdi was flown to a prison in Tennessee, making
communication with her family back in Minnesota,
difficult and costly.
They pulled me into like a 23-hour cell where I only
come out one hour just to take a shower, call my family.
Eventually Weyker's lies came to light and the charges
against Hamdi were dismissed.
While free from behind bars, those lies and the trauma they
inflicted still follow Hamdi.
I thought I'd go back to my life.
My life was never the same since the time I got arrested.
They took my life away.
When Hamdi was finally freed, she filed a lawsuit to hold
Heather Weyker accountable.
Heather Weyker in turn claimed immunity from that lawsuit.
But the trial court said, no, you don't have immunity
because what you did clearly violated Hamdi's
constitutional rights.
And so officer Weyker appealed to the Eighth Circuit.
Although as the Eighth Circuit tells it Weyker "fabricated
facts, knowingly relayed false information, and withheld,
exculpatory facts all with the intention that the three
girls would continue to be detained for crimes, for
which she knew there was no actual probable cause," Weyker
was still given immunity.
And therefore never had to answer for lying to
have Hamdi and her friends arrested and jailed.
In the Eighth Circuit, the court held that because
officer Weyker had been deputized as a federal
officer she could not be sued no matter how many times
she lied or how badly she violated the Constitution.
Under a legal doctrine called qualified immunity, government
workers are immune from claims that they violated the
Constitution unless the person whose rights they violated
can point to an earlier court case that says what they
did was unconstitutional.
Earlier cases established that police cannot lie to
protect a sham investigation.
Despite that the Eighth Circuit ruled that even
though Heather Weyker had lied, and even though those
lies and violated Hamdi's constitutional rights,
officer Weyker could not be held accountable because
she carried a federal badge.
Although that standard is nearly impossible to
meet in most cases, Hamdi could and did meet it here.
And Hamdi's case isn't unique.
IJ has worked on three separate cases
involving the same issue.
In all of them a federal officer violated the
Constitution, did it so egregiously that the lower
courts denied them qualified immunity, and then on appeal,
the federal appellate courts applied a blanket immunity
to them just because they are federal officers.
In Oliva versus Nivar, IJ client José Oliva
was the victim of an unprovoked attack by three
federal police working at his local VA hospital.
But when José sued those police, the appeals court
ruled that because they were federal officers,
there was nothing José could do about it.
In Byrd versus Lamb, the Fifth Circuit, granted
immunity to a Department of Homeland security agent
who held an innocent person at gunpoint and unlawfully
detained him to prevent him from investigating the
involvement of the agent's son in a drunk driving accident.
In Byrd versus Lamb, the agent went so far as to pull
the trigger of his loaded gun, but the gun jammed.
Only after police saw video of what happened.
Did they release Kevin and instead arrest the agent.
The Institute for Justice asked the United States
Supreme Court to review these cases and restore
accountability to our constitutional system.
These three cases are part of the Institute for Justice's
Project on Immunity and Accountability, which aims
to give all victims of constitutional abuse, the
ability to hold their abusers accountable, because what
happened to Hamdi, José, and Kevin could happen to anyone.
I'm looking to get out of this lawsuit is for
justice, um, justice for me, justice for my family.
Not only have I went through what I went through, but they
were right there along with me crying with me every day.