Laddie Huffman, et al. v. Rachel Harris

In a Section 1983 action against county sheriffs arising from the detention of an incompetent criminal defendant, a court must grant qualified immunity unless the county sheriffs violated constitutional duties that were clearly established by the existing law. In this case, the Fifth Circuit found that due to the length of the detention, the Due Process Clause obligated county sheriffs to release a violently dangerous schizophrenic inmate against whom criminal charges remained pending and whose criminal prosecution and civil commitment proceedings had stalled for reasons outside the sheriffs’ knowledge or control. Further, the Fifth Circuit impermissibly affirmed the denial of qualified immunity by defining the county sheriffs’ constitutional obligations at a “high level of generality” and without case law to clearly delineate their constitutional duties particularly under the unusual circumstances. In so doing, the Fifth Circuit not only deviated from the appropriate qualified immunity analysis but enshrined new obligations within the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment that are both impractical and undefined. Petitioners, therefore, ask the Court to review the Fifth Circuit’s qualified immunity analysis, including whether Petitioners owed the constitutional duties found to exist, so as to correct the injustice in this case and avoid complications and errors in future cases. The questions are: 1. Whether the Fifth Circuit erred in finding that the Due Process Clause imposes an obligation on county sheriffs to release a violently