If you’re a police officer called on to help a woman coping with a serious mental illness, but on arrival, she feels threatened after you use a key to let yourself into her apartment, what do you do? What if, in response to your entry, she grabs a small kitchen knife and yells, “I am going to kill you. I don’t need help”? The Supreme Court decided that if you shoot her multiple times, you get qualified immunity. They were able to avoid answering the question of whether the ADA required them to make accommodations due to her disability since the petitioner (City and County of San Francisco) didn’t argue the issue on appeal. The case is not over, nor is the ADA issue resolved. The case was remanded to the US District Court. Here is a link to the opinion and some commentary on the decision. Don’t forget to look Scalia’s concurrence with whom Justice Kagan concurred. Commentary in
NY Magazine
Daily Archives: May 22, 2015
CPCS Public Defender Receives MBA Access to Justice Award
On May 7, 2015, the Massachusetts Bar Association presented Ben Evans, a supervising attorney in the Public Defender Division’s Fall River office with the prestigious Access to Justice Defender Award.
After graduating from law school in 2005, Ben started as a staff attorney in the New Bedford office. Ben has been a supervising attorney in the Fall River office since 2011. Ben has been a mentor to many staff attorneys and law school interns.
Congratulations to Ben Evans, a public defender who inspires his colleagues to put their hearts and souls into the important work of representing poor people accused of crimes.
Here is the write-up that appeared in the MBA Annual Dinner program: