Today, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF), along with Cleveland-based civil rights attorney James Hardiman, filed a cert petition with the United States Supreme Court in Howse v. Hodous. The plaintiff, Shase Howse, was accosted and arrested on his front porch by a plainclothes officer. He was tackled, punched in the neck, and arrested without violating “clearly established law.” Mr. Howse lodged excessive force, malicious prosecution, and assault-and-battery claims against the officers, but earlier this year, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the officers did nothing wrong and were protected by qualified immunity, even though they had no cause to arrest Mr. Howse.
Read the petition here.
