It's wild - we paid for both the prosecution (taxes) and the defense (fundraising).
This happens all the time (albeit without the fundraising aspect). Police will violate someone's rights, and if it's egregious enough to get through qualified immunity and they get sued successfully, the city/county will pay. So the taxpayer pays for the police, jail, prosecution, etc. and then has to pay for when they get sued as well. If the defense here sued and were granted the court costs, the tax payers would be on the hook for that AND the costs in defending against that lawsuit itself.
There are ZERO repercussions to anyone in the justice system for screwing up. And the higher you go in the system, the tougher it is to raise an issue. Sorry
@CountValentine this case only proves how awful the system is and how little faith you should have in it. Untold thousands were spent on a case that didn't even merit going to a jury. I would love to hear from criminal attorneys how often this happens, my guess is 0.0001% of cases.
