Disclaimer: this is a fictional short story, with fictional characters. It examines potential consequences of the immunity the former president plans on extending to all police officers, after he was handed his own absolute immunity by the Supreme Court.
Justice Thomas lives in a neighborhood where his neighbors are predominantly liberal. One of his next-door neighbors is particularly not very excited about being neighbors with an extremely conservative Justice of the Supreme Court and an staunch supporter of the former president.
In a warm summer evening, when Justice Thomas is enjoying a book and soft music in his backyard, said neighbor, who can hear the music sound coming from her neighbor’s home, in her own backyard, takes the opportunity to inflict some annoyance upon Justice Thomas’s family. She walks to their front door and knocks. After a couple of minutes, Justice Thomas appears at the door. The neighbor, without even saying hello or any greetings, starts complaining about loud music at Justice Thomas’s backyard. Caught with surprise, Justice Thomas looks at her for a minute or two, then shuts the door without saying anything.
Back at his backyard, and as he continues to enjoy the book and the soft music, after 15 minutes or so Justice Thomas hears another knock at his door. He is now quite annoyed with the intrusive neighbor, and decides to give her a lesson. He reaches out to his handgun at his desk drawer, then stops by a locked cabinet at his kitchen to pick up a magazine and loads the gun, then walks to the front door, with the handgun in his hand. Upon opening the door, and to his extreme astonishment, he is confronted with two police officers. The police officers are both white males, the younger one originally from Texas, and the older one from Alabama. They both happen to have recently moved to the DC area, and are not very familiar with the neighborhoods and especially the homes of prominent government figures. They don’t watch TV, and have never seen how Justice Thomas looks like.
As soon as the police officers see the gun in Justice Thomas’s hand, they both take a few steps back, draw their guns from their holsters, and point them at the Justice, while the older officer calmly but with an assertive voice asks the Justice to drop the gun. Shocked and a bit confused, Justice Thomas starts explaining to the officers that he is a Supreme Court Justice. The older officer, using the same assertive voice asks the Justice for some identification. Justice Thomas says “Sure,” and goes back inside to grab his ID.
While waiting for the Justice to return, the younger officer quietly whispers “Supreme Court Justice?” And the older officer responds, whispering, “must be a DEI appointee,” to which the younger officer responds, still whispering, “God I hate them!”
As he returns to the door with the ID in his left hand, Justice Thomas is still holding the gun in his right hand. The officers are still pointing their handguns at him. Justice Thomas approaches them to show his ID. The older officer this time yells “Sir, please drop the gun.” But it’s too late. The younger officer has already shot three rounds, and the Justice is on the ground. Now the older officer is shocked and confused. He takes an angry look at the younger officer, then turns his attention to his body-cam. Yes, the light is on. His heart sinks. He feels the cold sweat on the back of his neck.
The younger officer kneels next to the Justice to check his pulse. The older officer is watching him, still standing, still his gun in his hand pointing at the empty door frame. Then he hears a female voice from inside the house asking “What’s going on?” As he looks up, he sees a female with a shotgun in her hands walking towards the door. Confused and extremely agitated by what had just happened in front of his eyes, he yells “Ma’am, drop the gun,” and, then, without waiting for her to respond or take any action, shots two rounds. She is down too.
A few hours later, the investigation is underway. The officers have handed their guns and badges to their superior. FBI agents are walking around the house and collecting anything that could be considered as evidence. The next morning, a preliminary hearing is held in front of a judge, who orders the two officers to be placed in custody, and the prosecutors to prepare their case in three weeks. As the prosecutors start examining the evidence and the body-cam footages, the lead prosecutor is notified of the officers’ lawyer asking to meet with him. After a few minutes, the lead prosecutor returns and tells the rest of the team to stop what they were doing and collect all the evidence and send them to the archives. Everyone is now looking at him, puzzled. He shakes his head and says “absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for acts taken while on duty; there is no case!”