Atmore News Staff
Lawyers for Escambia County District Attorney Stephen “Steve” Billy and Sheriff Heath Jackson each claimed in motions filed January 30 to dismiss a federal lawsuit against their clients, that neither could be held legally accountable for any actions involving the 2023 arrests of four local people on charges of revealing grand jury secrets, charges that were eventually dismissed.
The DA’s attorney argued in his motion that his client can’t be held accountable for any of his actions in the arrests because as a prosecutor, he is entitled to “absolute immunity.”
Institute for Justice (IJ) Attorney Jared McClain, lead counsel for the “Atmore 4” — Atmore News publisher Sherry Digmon (also a member of the county school board), reporter Don Fletcher, county school system bookkeeper Ashley Fore and school board member Cindy Jackson — said such a response was expected.
“There’s nothing there we didn’t expect,” McClain said of the filing. “Any time you sue a prosecutor, they’re going to insist that they can’t face accountability for their actions — no matter how egregious.”
The legal complaint, filed in November in Middle District of Alabama court, contends that the DA, sheriff and the deputies — Arthur Odom, Kevin Durden, Matthew Rabren and Steven Dereck Lowry — violated rights guaranteed under at least two amendments to the U.S. Constitution in arresting the four.
Lawyers for the sheriff filed a similar motion on his behalf, in which they argued that two of the deputies shouldn’t be considered in the suit. They also argued that the lawsuit could not link Sheriff Jackson to his deputies’ seizure of Digmon’s and Jackson’s phones or any of the arrests.
“In cases like this one, where law-enforcement officers conspired to punish people for their free speech, it’s pretty typical for them to say that no one can be held responsible because each officer only played a part in the scheme,” McClain said. “The command officers who vowed to punish their political enemies say they weren’t the ones who carried out the illegal arrests; and the officers who did their dirty work say they can’t be blamed either because they couldn’t have known they were participating in a retaliatory scheme with no basis in reality.”
The legal representative for [Heath] Jackson and the county lawmen also argued that a “municipal liability” claim cannot be brought against the county for the sheriff’s unconstitutional policies.
“In almost every state, when top policymakers for local governments violate your rights, you can hold the government liable for enforcing an unconstitutional policy,” McClain said. “But the Supreme Court ruled a few decades ago that Alabama is special.
“The Court ruled that county sheriffs in Alabama are technically state officers (and therefore acting on behalf of the state, which is immune under the Eleventh Amendment) instead of county officers because the state has the power to impeach them — even though county sheriffs are elected, funded, and operate on a county level. We think the Supreme Court’s decision was wrong and created yet another artificial barrier to accountability.”
McClain said he and co-counsel Brian Morris and Jacob Harcar are working on a response to the motions.