JESSOP v. CITY OF FRESNO

In 2013 Fresno police officers obtained a warrant to search the homes and ATM business of Micah Jessop and Brittan Ashjian, in an investigation of suspected illegal gambling machines. According to the owners, the officers seized more than $275,000 in cash and rare coins, including a coin collection worth about $125,000, and inventoried only $50,000 and no coins. The officers deny taking anything; the theft is alleged, and no charges were filed.

Jessop and Ashjian sued under Section 1983, the 1871 civil-rights statute, arguing the theft was an unreasonable seizure. They lost, and the way they lost is the point of this file. The Ninth Circuit did not rule that the theft was constitutional. As the decision is summarized, the panel need not, and did not, decide whether the officers violated the Constitution. Using the discretion Pearson v. Callahan granted in 2009, it held only that no clearly established law said stealing property seized under a warrant violates the Fourth Amendment, while saying the officers ought to have recognized the alleged theft was morally wrong.

In May 2020 the Supreme Court was asked to review it, with briefs from across the spectrum urging it to act. The petition was denied, with no explanation and no noted dissent.S6 ↗S4 ↗S1 ↗S2 ↗

Every other case file scores a ruling. This one scores a refusal to rule, twice: the Ninth Circuit declining to decide the constitutional question, and the Supreme Court declining to review it. A denial of certiorari is not a ruling on the merits, and this file scores it as what it is.

The posture matters. At summary judgment the courts take the owners' account as given, so immunity was granted on the assumption that the theft happened. The dispute was never only whether it happened; it was whether the law had been spelled out clearly enough to allow a suit.

Because no court ruled the theft unconstitutional, the law stays not clearly established. As the amici warned, the next officer who takes warrant-seized property in the circuit can claim the same immunity. The non-decision does not only fail these owners; it shields the next case.S4 ↗S3 ↗S6 ↗

Read as a set, the police-accountability chain is a machine with three moving parts. Harlow (1982) built the clearly-established shield. Saucier (2001) made courts decide the constitutional question first: the one brake that kept the law growing. Pearson (2009) made that step optional. Jessop is what the machine produces unbraked: an alleged $225,000 theft, called morally wrong, immunized because the law was never clearly established, and kept unclear because the court declined to clarify it.S4 ↗

Most divergences need explaining: a buried doctrine, a procedural trick, a narrow holding. This one needs none. The owners say police took money that was not theirs; the court said such a theft would be morally wrong; the owners recovered nothing under the Constitution, because the wrong had never been written down in exactly the right way.

The clarity that makes Jessop the harshest example also makes it a pressure point. Its facts made it a rallying case for critics of qualified immunity across the spectrum, and the natural seed of the next campaign: reform of the doctrine itself.S1 ↗S3 ↗S6 ↗