Legal Question in Criminal Law in Mississippi
i need information on wrongful arrests in the state of mississippi where the defendant won their case---thank you-- because my mother and her boyfriend were arrested for an armed robbery that they did not do and spent about 18 or 19 month's in harrison county jail and then they they were both released because there was no evidence and so they are going to sue the city of biloxi,ms--any information you could give me woud and will be helpful so thank you all very much
1 Answer from Attorneys
Generally the Police are "protected" with a doctrine known as "soverign immunity" and unless you can show "bad faith" or "a complete lack of probable cause to believe a crime was committed and that the people arrested had something to do with the crime" then the City and the Police Department will be immune from a lawsuit. On the other hand, if you can show that they were arrested for some ulterior purpose, such as to force them to provide evidence against someone else, or to try to make them suffer some penalty for another incident for which no arrests could be made, then perhaps a good lawsuit could be pursued. You will probably have a very difficult time finding competent counsel to represent them with this claim for the reason that even if the lawsuit is deemed "valid" the verdicts in these cases are generally very small due in part to the fact that the taxpayers who have to foot the bill for the verdict are on the jury in many cases.
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