J.D. Vance says ICE shooter Jonathan Ross has "absolute immunity"; a prominent expert, in so many words, says Vance is full of feces. Guess who's right?

Video scene, a split second after deadly shot (YouTube)

After the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, Vice President J.D. Vance said ICE agent Jonathan Ross enjoyed "absolute immunity" from prosecution for the incident. Vance earned his law degree at Yale University, but that does not mean he knows the relevant law in the Ross matter -- and it certainly doesn't mean Vance, an ardent defender of Donald Trump (perhaps the most prodigious liar in modern American history) is honest. So it should be no surprise to most non-MAGA Americans that the VP is operating on shaky legal ground here.

Evidence of that comes via an article at Mother Jones under the headline "Misconduct Expert says State Has the right to Charge ICE Officer Who Killed Renee Good." Senior Reporter Samantha Michaels writes:

After an ICE agent shot and killed Renée Good in Minneapolis this week, firing his weapon as she attempted to drive away, protesters have amassed around the country, many wondering: Can that officer be taken to court?

The Trump administration, predictably, says the agent, Jonathan Ross, is immune from prosecution. “You have a federal law enforcement official engaging in federal law enforcement action,” Vice President JD Vance told reporters on Thursday. “That guy is protected by absolute immunity. He was doing his job.”

But what do independent attorneys say? After the shooting, I reached out to Robert Bennett, a veteran lawyer in Minneapolis who has worked on hundreds of federal court police misconduct cases during his 50-year career. “I’ve deposed thousands of police officers,” he says. “ICE agents do not have absolute immunity.”

Bennett says the state of Minnesota has the right to prosecute an ICE agent who commits misconduct. But, he adds, that might be difficult now that the FBI has essentially booted the state’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension off the case—blocking access, the BCA wrote, to “case materials, scene evidence or investigative interviews necessary to complete a thorough and independent investigation.”

In short, Americans should not rely on J.D. Vance for legal advice. Michaels provides details to suggest Vance might struggle to make a living if he's ever forced off the government teat and must engage in private practice. In fact, one might reasonably wonder how this guy ever passed a bar exam. From the Mother Jones piece:

In the conversation below, edited for length and clarity, Bennett discusses how the shooting in Minneapolis unfolded and the legal paths forward.

When you watched the videos of this shooting, what did you see?

You saw what could be easily identified as four ICE officers. And they’re all experiencing, to a greater or lesser extent, the same set of operative facts, the same factual stimuli. But only one officer, seeing the set of circumstances, picked up his weapon. None of the other officers did. That’s a bad fact [for Ross].

Also, the officer walked in front of the car, which counts against him in the reasonableness analysis. If you look at the recent Supreme Court case of Barnes v. Felix, that’s problematic for the ICE agent.

At this point, many readers likely will begin to understand that Bennett knows what he's talking about, while Vance does not. Michaels writes:

What happened in Barnes v. Felix?

It’s a shooting case where the officer walked around the car, [lunged
and jumped onto the door sill], and put himself in harm’s way. You can’t bootstrap your own bad situation [to] allow a use of force.

What did the court find?

They sent it back to the trial court to consider it. But there’s good language in there.

We noted above that Vance suggested Ross was in the clear because he was "doing his job." Now we learn that isn't the standard at all:

You said it’s bad news for the ICE agent, Ross, that his colleagues didn’t pull their weapons. Can you talk more about that?

Sure, we’ve had several other cases. There was a tactical semicircle, a bunch of officers aiming their guns at a couple fighting over a knife; one officer out of the eight or nine fired his weapon, none of the others perceived the need to.

And that’s important because it suggests the officer who fired wasn’t reasonable, right? Under federal law, an officer can only use deadly force if he had a reasonable fear that he could otherwise be killed or harmed.

It’s an objective reasonableness standard. So it’s not whether you were personally scared out of your wits and fired your gun. It’s: Would an objectively reasonable officer at the scene have fired his weapon, believing he was in danger of death or immediate bodily harm?

In Ross’ case, there was a previous incident—Ross had shot [with a Taser] through a window before at somebody in the car, and the guy hit the gas, and Ross had stuck his arm through the broken window, and he got cut [and dragged about 100 yards]. And so he was supposedly reacting to that. He’s not an objective officer at that point.

Bennett makes a powerful point, one that never occurred to me. Vance, despite his snazzy law degree, apparently did not know it -- and wanted to ensure the public never understood it. 

Michaels' next question drills down to the crux of the matter -- and Bennett nails the answer by citing to ACTUAL LAW. Imagine that. When have Trump or any of his underlings ever cited actual law to support their dubious actions. I cannot think of a single instance -- and that indicates they don't know the law, don't care about the law, and want to make sure the public (especially MAGA mouth breathers) never understand the law:

The Trump administration has suggested that Ross is immune from prosecution as a federal officer. Why do you say he’s not?

There’s plenty of case law that allows for the prosecution of federal law enforcement agencies, including ICE. And it’s clear under the law that a federal officer who shoots somebody in Minnesota and kills them is subject to a Minnesota investigation and Minnesota law.

Now, the feds just took that away this morning, and they’ve already decided who’s at fault. The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension was going to do an investigation to find out. 

But I can tell you, the federal code provides that when there is a state criminal prosecution of a federal officer in Minnesota or any other state, the officer has the right to remove the case to federal court. So if Ross was charged in Hennepin County, he could remove the case to the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota, have a federal judge deal with his case. The code is explicitly predicting such a prosecution could take place. If there was immunity of an absolute nature, you wouldn’t need that section, right?

The administration seems to argue that Ross is protected under the Supremacy Clause, which essentially says that states can’t charge a federal officer if the officer was acting within the scope of his duties.

Do you think killing people is acting within the scope of their duties? What if they decided to kill the 435,000 people in the city of Minneapolis while they were here, would the Supremacy Clause give them a free pass? I don’t think so.

Also, if there was an actual independent investigation, and you apply the actual federal case law to this, and you concluded that Ross violated her rights by using excessive deadly force, he could be indicted federally. Now, nobody believes that would ever happen now: For a guy who talked a lot about rigged things, this [investigation] is rigged. Kash Patel took over the autopsy, so who knows, maybe they’ll say she died of a heart attack when she was backing up.

If the officer isn’t charged criminally, the other route is a lawsuit. What are the challenges there?

My team and I think there are ways to do it. I hope that her mother, or her next of kin, calls us and we’ll figure out a Bivens action or a Federal Tort Claims Act case, or something else. If you look at this case carefully, it has all the hallmarks of cases we’ve either won or settled for amounts of money no reasonable person would pay us if we weren’t going to win. It is essentially a garden variety unjustified use of deadly force case. And that’s based on the facts we know now; I bet the case is going to get better.