holding that § 1983 does not “authoriz[e] a convicted person to assert a claim for damages against a police officer for giving perjured testimony at his criminal trial”
How later courts described this case
- holding that § 1983 does not “authoriz[e] a convicted person to assert a claim for damages against a police officer for giving perjured testimony at his criminal trial”
- stating that “‘[t]he demands of public policy on which the rule [of absolute immunity] is based are so controlling that diere is only one considered case in the English or American reports in which the existence of the general doctrine of absolute immunity under the common law has ever been questioned’ ” (quoting Van Vechten Veeder, Absolute Immunity in Defamation: Judicial Proceedings, 9 Colum. L. Rev. 463, 465-66 (1909))
- holding that 42 U.S.C. § 1983 does not authorize a convicted person to assert a claim for damages against a police officer for giving perjured testimony at his criminal trial on the ground that absolute immunity protects any witness from civil liability based on his testimony in a judicial proceeding
- concluding that witness immunity was " "so well grounded in history and reason' that we cannot believe that Congress impinged on it "by covert inclusion in the general language before us' " (quoting Tenney v. Brandhove, 341 U.S. 367, 376 , 71 S.Ct. 783, 788 , 95 L.Ed. 1019 (1951))
Written by the judges who cited it.
Distinguished
Distinguished by Wynn v. Earin, 131 Wash. App. 28 (2005)
But Briscoe is distinguishable because there the policy of witness immunity did not contravene a statute.
The opinion
Justice Blackmun,
dissenting.
I join all of Justice Marshall’s dissenting opinion except Part I. I cannot join its Part I, for I adhere to the views I expressed for the Court in City of Newport v. Fact Concerts, Inc., 453 U. S. 247, 258-259 (1981), regarding the role played by history and policy in determining whether § 1983 incorporates a particular common-law immunity. It is proper to assume — indeed, the Court in the past has assumed — “that members of the 42d Congress were familiar with common-law principles . . . and that they likely intended these common-law principles to obtain, absent specific provisions to the contrary.” Id., at 258. If an immunity was well established in the common law in 1871, careful analysis of the policies supporting it, and those supporting § 1983, governs the determination whether that immunity was retained.
In my view, Justice Marshall’s dissent convincingly demonstrates that the Court finds little support for its decision in the present case either in the language of the statute, the history of the common law, the relevant legislative history, or policy considerations.
I therefore dissent.