Tennessee man jailed 37 days for Trump meme wins settlement after lawsuit

And insurers doing their due diligence and charging based on potential for liability would go a long way to mitigating abuses.

Best solution would be to simply require licensing and conduct standards to be a police professional similar to that required for Registered Nurses.

For which they'd pay with taxpayer's money anyway

Maybe it would make officers turn in the bad apples, since they insist "one bad apple" each time these issues arise.

Recent history has shown that sometimes people will vote for incompetent criminals but, elected or not, that doesn't mean we shouldn't still hold them accountable for what they do.

> I guarantee you they'll elect him again. $91 per resident is a small price to pay for a guy who's willing to arrest their political enemies.

in some sense you might be right because instead of this 91$ being taken per resident directly from their wallets, what would happen is the de-gradation of the services because of lack of funds, so your roads,clean drinking water and everything needed for a govt would have 91$ less per resident.

and then when those same quality of roads decline and other negative things happen, the same community might find scapegoats of its the problem of X,Y or Z and the sheriff is their vocal voices against the X,Y or Z.

So you might be right, also y'know what's the worst part is? It's the assymetry, these sheriffs might continue to get re-elected because of the above reasons I gave and they would continue doing un-just things.

And then it is upon the onus of the person (in this case the tennessee man) who was jailed unjustfully and who would have to file a lawsuit and win. Things perhaps could've turned out differently or taken more longer and imagine the man who might've been jailed for more time.

Either way, I think because of all of these reasons, its a systemetic problem but the result of it is that the society has become too polarized and so weirdly incentivized that you can get thrown into jail for memes. I imagine these things might continue to happen but atleast a legal precedent might've been set now (not sure about how American law works).

Police aren't "protected persons"

> civilians who find themselves in the midst of an international armed conflict or military occupation and are in the hands of a foreign power

If they don't like it, we could have individual punishment but they have to surrender qualified immunity. Deal?

In the current environment, taxpayers are collectively punished.

Yes, collective punishment of the smaller collective who can self-police (cops, no pun intended) rather than the larger collective who can't (citizens and taxpayers at large).

Not sure if you're trying to be clever (in which case I'd encourage you to just say what you mean next time), but financially penalizing a company for bad behavior absolutely is one way to pierce the corporate veil and ensure workers aligned with corporate health (through things like stock, continued employment, etc) are also aligned with societal health.

I fully agree, but you will never hear a candidate for sheriff call out an incumbent for being a shitty person. They're cops first, and public officials second, so both candidates will say they'll bring down crime more, but they will never betray the tribe by suggesting that law enforcment institutions can harbor criminal behavior.

This is a country where people are fine with more of their taxes going into police budgets every year.

Adding a line item to their property tax bill showing how much is paid into settling lawsuits will not make people think that they should demand more accountability. They will think that it should be harder to take legal action against the police.

I'd vote for that in a heartbeat.

I think part of the problem here is that this is usually hidden from visibility (intentionally) by officials because it reflects negatively on them.

It may make the news for a day or two, never get seen by the majority of voters, and get swept away later under the deluge of distraction most "infotainment pretending to be news" provides.

---

Go further and just list all government settlements/court judgements underneath the elected official in charge of the branch responsible.

> what they're voting for.

If citizens had granular voting power (i.e. liquid democracy), this would make more sense. As it stands you get to vote for team red or team blue once in a while and hope that their votes impact that line item you’re concerned about.

While $835k is undoubtedly a lot of money for this man, split among Tennessee's 7M residents, this works out to be less per taxpayer than the sales tax on a latte.

Still, this idea bears merit for other reasons. Americans routinely underestimate how much money is spent on Social Security, healthcare, and debt payments, and overestimate how much money is spent on education and infrastructure. More clarity into that could help build real political momentum to actually balance the budget.

> For police in particular, the unions prevent a lot of police accountability, and because of the power that police wield over the population, I am comfortable saying I support unions EXCEPT police unions.

Police unions don't have the power to stop state prosecutors from filing charges on officers, or the power to stop a jury from finding an officer guilty, or the power to stop a judge from sending a cop to prison for their crimes. Those are the main problems standing in the way of police accountability.

Where police unions do end up giving too much protection for police it's in contracts that get approved by government officials when they shouldn't have been. Police unions can ask for unreasonable things, but when they do our governments should be telling them to fuck off instead of rubber stamping whatever they ask for.

Police, like almost all workers, still need unions though. Police can still be subjected to things like unpaid overtime, unsafe working conditions, insufficient training, low wages, and poor benefits. Police should be able to unionize to prevent being exploited. Local governments should refuse to cave to their unions unreasonable demands such as those that prohibit anonymous complaints, or purge disciplinary records to prevent identifying repeat offenders, or reject body cameras, or allow officers to use paid vacation time to cover unpaid suspensions.

Police unions get a lot of attention as being the main thing preventing police accountability but they really aren't. The problems are much deeper and eliminating the unions will not solve them.

You're making a big mistake by completely failing to account for the inherent (not to mention quite large) uncertainties in this kind of situation.

A priori, it's not "40 days in jail == $800k payday", it's "some unknown number of days in jail and risk of a conviction in exchange for a chance at a payday of unknown value".

Isn’t Jan 6 a better example? The next Jan 6 will be full of those seeking eligibility into a potential slush fund

Not all of us are from Somalia!

This is an extremely paranoid take. Sure, $800k for 40 days is good money, but it also makes the department look terrible, and sets a precident that they have violated rights in the past. It isn't exactly a "free money glitch", since this wasn't just some automatic "$20k/day" judgment, this was damages for violating his freedom of speech.

Note that the quoted laws also cover things that would be restraining or harassment orders in the USA.

UK police aren't breaking laws by arresting people for those social media posts. They don't have free speech to begin with.

Those 30 aren’t arrested for just for writing “social media posts” but for possibly “harmful communication including incitement to terrorism and violence, online threats and abuse, and unwanted communication via email and other means”

Of the 90% many will accept their fault and receive a caution or warning

Edit: and none of those cases would involve pretrial remand/jail

The UK has different speech laws than the United States. Presumably, the actions of the police making those arrests are within the scope of UK law. Even if 90% don't result in a conviction, the police may still be operating within the scope of their authority in those arrests.

I find it ironic; George Orwell was English!

What are these messages? Threatening your ex-wife? Plotting to commit arson? Or saying you don't like immigrants? They all fall under this umbrella, yet the vast majority of people would agree the first two are criminal in nature.

My understanding is that saying anything "grossly offensive" is illegal there, so it's not clear those police were blatantly overstepping their authority like in the case from the OP.

Excuse the whataboutism, but how many Americans are arrested for “disorderly conduct” each day? (Which from my YouTube police footage watching appears to be “being an annoying arsehole in public” [1] ie a broadly similar moral misbehaviour)

> [1] An overt act or conduct in public (or affecting the public) that disturbs the peace, safety, morals, or order (e.g., fighting, making unreasonable noise, using obscene/abusive language or gestures, obstructing traffic, creating hazardous/physically offensive conditions, refusing to disperse).

Our online laws which Americans often seem to view entirely through the lens of free speech are more about public (dis)order. It’s not ideas that are being censored, it’s personal conduct online which may be harassing, threatening, abusive or may create a breach of the peace.

It is similar in Germany, where you can be arrested for simply posting an insult (non-violent) to a politician. No police will face charges if you aren't convicted. And you will NEVER get a settlement.

I don't know why HN has become full of authoritarian anti-free-speech apologists. The current political divisions are turning people insane.

That’s not Europe. They had a whole vote about it and everything!

The UK doesn’t have free speech

Maybe he should try to get compensation through the new Anti-Weaponization Fund.

> “The machinery of government should never be weaponized against any American, and it is this Department’s intention to make right the wrongs that were previously done while ensuring this never happens again,” said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-...

While we'd all like to see justice, I can understand taking this offer. SPY has averaged 15% APY over the past decade, which means if you dropped the full $835k into SPY you'd have passive income of $125k per year without touching the principal. That's a never-work-again, very comfortable life in large parts of the country. He's in Lexington Tennessee where the median income is less than half of that, and those people actually have to work for their money. I'm sure some of that money is going to pay the lawyers but I'm also assuming he's not starting at $0 savings either so he really should never have to work again, especially considering at his age he'll be raking in that sweet social security and medicare.

Under today’s administration and courts a federal lawsuit like that was going nowhere anyway, except maybe an executive order praising the Sheriff.

Potentially winning a drawn-out lawsuit against that sheriff, investigator, and county would have been a big improvement for the rights of his neighbors and friends, but I'd wager that with even half of those settlement winnings that he could do a lot more good than one lawsuit.

For example, there are surely dozens of others who are taking plea deals because they can't afford a lawyer to bring such a lawsuit, a few hundred thousand could multiply the impact tenfold.

His choice makes sense when you consider that the Supreme Court under Trump has essentially gutted Bivens. Our legal system is currently very broken sadly requiring strategic choices versus just (as in justice) choices. It's not clear the Supremes wouldn't contort to just gut 1983 as well (especially with their judicially created qualified immunity nonsense).

https://ballsandstrikes.org/law-politics/supreme-court-ice-r...

One of the worst examples in the US is the consequence asymmetry for speech. Law enforcement and federal agents can lie as much as they like with impunity when dealing with citizens, but (a) it's a federal crime to lie to a federal officer (18 US Code § 1001, up to 8 years imprisonment), and (b) truly, anything you say to law enforcement when under any suspicion can and will be used against you in a court of law, even the act of pleading the 5th, regardless of (or perhaps especially because of) your innocence. "I want a lawyer", repeated ad-nauseam, is always the least harmful response, regardless of context[0].

Also, the body of federal law and regulations is so vast that smart people estimate the average person unknowingly breaks roughly 3 federal criminal laws per day[1], giving the federal government the legal ability to arbitrarily arrest anyone they want.

[0] James Duane, You have the right to remain innocent, 2016

[1] Harvey Silverglate, Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent, 2011.

The death penalty should be reserved for people who violate a position of public trust and authority.

> In a sane, fair, and (crucially) long-term stable system, persons given privilege and authority over others are subject to a higher standard for their own behavior.

The US military is subject to a higher standard, the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Penalties for US service members breaking the law or codes of conduct are much higher and much more severe than civilians. The US military makes routine example of law breakers and misconduct.

The US police force, by contrast, is civilian. They are not licensed, commissioned, or subject to additional standards. Certainly not nationwide standards that would bar police removed from their post from finding similar work elsewhere.

We should pay our police officers more, make them undergo nationally standardized training and licensing, and then hold them to a higher standard if and when they break the law.

Police court-martial.

Not the legislature: the Supreme Court. Qualified Immunity was created out of whole cloth by the Supreme Court back in the 1960's when a police officer arrested- and then a judge convicted- a group of black and white Episcopal priests for "making a disturbance of the peace"- that is, having black and white people out in public together as equals. This was Pierson v. Ray, decided by the Supreme Court in 1967.

The current implementation of it- where you need to have "clearly establish" a Constitutional right with a prior case in this region- is based on Pearson v. Callahan from 2009, and it takes a terrible Supreme Court precedent and makes it even worse. This has created the patchwork "no case in the circuit has clearly established that a police officer must not make a warrantless search on a Tuesday in May" sort of quibbling.

The work of legislatures has been to roll back qualified immunity. Colorado, New Mexico, and California have removed qualified immunity for their law enforcement officers at the state level. LEO's can still claim qualified immunity for suits under federal law, but they cannot for some suits brought under state law or the state constitution in those states.

The Supreme Court has also, at the same time they've made it harder to hold police to account, made it harder to hold politicians to account, gutting bribery laws and expanding "free speech" to include paying politicians. And the recent idea that a President can't be prosecuted for any "official acts" is also nonsense created by the Supreme Court. This isn't Congress fault, there were laws that prevented it. The Supreme Court just decided that they didn't want to enforce those laws.

The Supreme Court at the root of a lot of the dysfunction in American politics, and somehow still has more respect than they deserve.

This is a misunderstanding. In most cases you cannot sue the federal and state governments, with very important exceptions, but you can definitely sue the police. Government officials, such as the police, usually only have _qualified_ immunity rather than absolute or sovereign immunity, and even then only when they were acting in good faith and are not being accused of violating someone’s constitutional rights.

The real problem right now is how the courts determine if an official was acting in good faith. Right now they are assumed to have acted in good faith unless it has already been “clearly established” that what they did was illegal. This means that the official can argue that they didn’t know that their actions were illegal because no prior case ever dealt with that exact fact pattern. This works far too often and has let a lot of very guilty police get away with their crimes. Still, some police officers _are_ held to account, so it is not actually impossible.

It is a weakness, but yes, an intentional one. Why a weakness? It leads to structural instability.

Seems to me that law enforcement officers should be required to carry liability insurance that they personally pay for. Have a lot of settlements / claims? Your insurance rate goes up. That happens enough and now it's not economically feasible to hold the job

I highly doubt Tennessee is going to start printing USD.

Merely facing some consequences to his career would be far too weak. This dude knowingly imprisoned somebody for over a month. The minimum consequence should be, say, two days in jail for every day this guy spent locked up. Better would be whatever punishment we'd levy against any common criminal who kidnapped someone for 37 days. Ideally we'd be even harsher than that, due to the abuse of authority involved.

This wasn't some honest mistake. This was a deliberate violation of a citizen's civil rights. This was a crime, and the only reason it's treated so lightly is because the criminal is an officer of the law.

But who am I kidding, even him losing a single day's pay would be a victory here. Nothing will actually happen to him.

> The money paid to Bushart ultimately is no skin off the government's back.

The suit was filed against Perry County, TN, not the state or federal government. A quick google says that its budget is $33M, so in fact this is a very impactful settlement for the county.

> US lacks some sort of Federal "inspectorate of police"

I don't think this is true, or at least it's not entirely true.

Various states and law enforcement agencies have an office of the inspector general which at least should provide some oversight. We also have the courts and individual officers and agencies can be sued in the court of law which also provides a means of oversight. You seem to be suggesting that everything is corrupt, corrupt local authorities, corrupt feds captured by the party. I think that level of perceived corruption is not reflected in operational reality.

Some states or local police organizations do in fact look at past police records for applicants. There's a bit of variation here, but it's probably a bit better organized than, say the EU where outside of other bureaucratic hurdles I don't believe there is any real way to stop some German citizen who should be banned from being a police officer from moving to Estonia and being a police officer. Though perhaps I'm wrong and there is an EU-wide database that all countries and their police forces use?

I know the UK isn't in the EU, but I just bring that up as I think it may be a bit closer of an example.

Yeah. Did any meaningful consequences befall anyone for the Horizon IT scandal?

Yes. (And an accurate quote, too.)

Okay, that's for FIRE's part, but they worked with another law firm:

"Represented by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and Phillips & Phillips, PLLC"

It's not the government paying, its you.

> the offending employee likely can't pay the judgment in full

My doctor is required to carry malpractice insurance. Those who commit repeated egregious mistakes become uninsurable.

Make cops do the same.

The system needs to change so pursuing frivolous or weak charges doesn't work. We also need to reform bail, which has gone way outside of historical/constitutional norms.

Turning it into an escalating back and forth of each side trying to imprison the other, is not conducive to the kind of change we need. To take a recent example, while I don't particularly like James Comey or Letitia James, I don't think they should have been targeted. That kind of stuff is what happens when it escalates to each side calling for the other side to be locked up.

Nobody should have that power.

What kind of mindset do you need to have where you think the only way to prevent someone from doing something is via the threat of imprisonment after the fact? The vast majority of people don't do this, and that's because they don't have the power to do it, not because they don't want to.

We should start by removing the ability of prosecutors and police to bring such cases in the first place.

Where does this idea come from that we somehow can't take power away from people without criminal punishment after the fact?

Nobody should have this power, and then abuse of power wouldn't be an issue.

Not just scott free, but they might be getting a million dollars each from tax payers due to that asinine "settlement" from Trump suing the government.

False imprisonment generally doesn't apply when due process is followed, like getting a warrant.

You'd have to change the law to allow for prosecutions in cases like this, and that change would likely be weaponized in other cases.

No there isn't, according to the appeals court which overturned it.

Well, his conviction was eventually overturned on appeal.

> There’s a large difference between tampering with an election by spreading misinformation (illegal)

Spreading misinformation about elections is broadly legal.

"Are election-related false statements protected by the First Amendment?

Generally yes, but not if they seek to interfere with the process of voting."

https://www.law.georgetown.edu/icap/wp-content/uploads/sites...

In one case, the meme was accurate - the photo, the quote, and its attribution were all accurate, and the cops knew that. It never made it to trial, for obvious reasons.

In the other, it was false information, a grand jury indicted, and a jury convicted. The appeal rested on the government struggling to demonstrate a) anyone actively fell for the information and b) the conspiracy element. (https://ww3.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/OPN/23-7577_opn.pdf)

Somehow, this distinction is... bias?

I voted for Trump. I fail to see how the meme here is a threat. And I also think that telling Democrats they can vote by text message is an attempt to undermine the election.

There are no double standards. Take my downvote.

Did this guy campaign on "I'll violate the First Amendment" or something?

What level of taxpayer due dilligence are you envisioning here?

What a ridiculous argument.

Basic responsibility sits with those who commit the act.

Sometimes I feel like I live in an alternative reality because I very clearly remember thousands of people saying shit like that.

Imagine you added this context to that statement which was a broader statement about bail and not about how he supported the attacker? I don't agree with Kirk, but your "quote" of him is purposefully misleading.

“I’m not qualifying it. I think it’s awful. It’s not right,” Kirk said about the attack on Pelosi, who suffered a skull fracture after being hit in the head with a hammer. “But why is it that in Chicago you’re able to commit murder and be out the next day? Why is it that you’re able to trespass, second-degree murder, arson, threaten a public official, cashless bail. This happens all over San Francisco. But if you go after the Pelosis, oh, you’re [not] let out immediately. Got it.”

https://www.factcheck.org/2025/09/viral-claims-about-charlie...

Here's the actual video, which I think makes it clear that he's joking and he follows it up with the point he made above.

https://x.com/JasonSCampbell/status/1587127536122732544

He wasn’t jailed for 37 days. He was jailed indefinitely. Every day he didn’t know if things would get worse. He didn’t know how long he was staying. He was already in the absurd scenario for being jailed for a meme so anything was possible at that point. He happened to get out after 37 days.

Would you do that if you were an ex-law enforcement officer who's racial profile puts you under the protection of criminals on the yard that largely support the person you heckled while not knowing that it was only going to be 37 days?

I wouldn't, but that does really put some perspective on it.

His trouble isn't just from the time in jail, though. It's from all the Trump supporters who harass him as well. Previously, and in the future.

Would you live through the stress of a legal case with unknown legal costs and unknown incarceration time for that amount of money?

Indeed. Qualified immunity is a stain on American jurisprudence.

You can almost never hold anyone in government accountable. You are forced to sue your own community to get some shred of justice while the actual people who violated your rights face zero accountability.

Tell lawmakers who want your vote this November that you want an end to qualified immunity. Agents of the state should not be less accountable to the laws of the land than regular individuals.

This was settled out of court. Nothing was proven. For the county to settle for this much, there must be some things going on behind closed doors that the people involved do not want to be made public.

That’s relevant and should have been included in the warrant, but I still blame the Judge here.

When it comes to whether a meme is a threat, the image largely speaks for itself and there’s no way you can reasonably read that meme to be a threat.

It’s clearly political and taking sides and potentially offensive, but there’s nothing to suggest anyone is going to take to violence. The judge should have seen the picture and denied the warrant.