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CA10: In an alleged false arrest case, officers don't have to know plaintiff's mental state; they can infer it

By John Wesley Hall, Jr.

Plaintiff’s arrest was with probable cause of bank fraud. His argument that they could not know his intent fails. Painter v. City of Albuquerque, 2010 U.S. App. LEXIS 12878 (10th Cir. June 23, 2010) (unpublished): At the end of the day, the hard fact confronting Mr. Painter is that probable cause "does not deal with hard certainties, but with probabilities." Gates, 462 U.S. at 231. "Probable cause does not require the same type of specific evidence of each element of the offense as would be needed to support a conviction." Adams v. Williams, 407 U.S. 143, 149, 92 S. Ct. 1921, 32 L. Ed. 2d 612 (1972). And the facts known to the officers here, while not pointing uniformly in the same direction or metaphysically dispositive of Mr. Painter's intent, were sufficient for an objectively reasonable officer to think that Mr...continue to full post

Full post as published by Fourth Amendment on June 25, 2010 (boomark / email).