Leonard Johnson v. Town of Prosper, Paul D. Boothe, Doug Kowalski – Quick Update

July 14^th marked the first anniversary of filing the Civil Rights lawsuit against the Town of Prosper. Now granted, the lawsuit wasn’t complete until all parties could file their responses to the lawsuit. That was completed on November 21, 2023.

With that said, I’ve been asked about the status of the lawsuit a few times. I decided to share some updates.

Has there been any movement by the court on the case – the answer is no. However, there has been some interesting activity.

Back in May, the SMU folks reached back out to me over a decision from the 5^th Circuit of Appeals. Well, I found out some folks like to dig into this case stuff and read it from front to back, so I included that decision below.

They wanted to file a supplemental case of an authority on my case. In a nutshell, they wanted to attach this ruling to my case. I told them, go for it!

When I read the first sentence from the 5^th circuit – I nearly fell out of my chair.

For those who worry that qualified immunity can be invoked under absurd circumstances: Buckle up.

Now, it’s just my personal opinion, but after I read through this document, the 5^th Circuit judge was pretty much fed up with the abuse of qualified immunity. Do I believe in QI, sure. Do I believe that it’s abused – yes, I do.

Now, for those who do not want to read through the boring shit and just want to know the brass tacks of how this relates to my case – is all about the independent-intermediary doctrine. If you do a quick Google search, you’ll see it’s defined as:

The independent-intermediary doctrine provides that “if facts supporting an arrest are placed before an independent intermediary such as a magistrate or grand jury, the intermediary’s decision breaks the chain of causation for false arrest, insulating the initiating party.”

Again, in summary, if the police take a case with all their research and stuff to a magistrate or grand jury and then THAT entity draws the same conclusions as the police – then claims like false arrest are mute. And of course, QI stands.

In my case, that’s what the defendants are claiming for QI – is that the judge and grand jury came to the same conclusion and that I was a vast criminal mastermind – which broke the chain of causation.

That brings me to the 5^th circuit appeals document below. It states that two Houston police officers let a drunk driver go and then arrested a good Samaritan – claiming he was impersonating a peace officer. The 5^th circuit denied the QI claim (in the appeal below)

Granted, our initial similarities are quite intriguing, this guy being arrested for impersonating a peace officer and mine for impersonating a public servant. However, that is not the main tie-in with my case.

The argument presented by the plaintiff in the 5^th Circuit appeals case is the same in my case: when officers cull facts and create or manipulate evidence to support their narrative – the independent-intermediary doctrine should not be applied. I mean if you think about it, that means those other entities (judge, grand jury) are making their decisions on bad data.

If any more traction shows up, I’ll be sure to post it.

22-20621-CV0

If you read through this – felt really bad for this guy.