More: While an ideologically diverse group of legal scholars and judges have criticized qualified immunity in recent years, few have done so as forcefully or as defiantly as Judge Carlton Reeves.

"Desmond Green has suffered two injustices," he wrote, referring to the plaintiff's mistaken arrest and unjustified, yearslong detention. Then, referring to Green's lawsuit against the police, who are claiming immunity for their behavior in the case, Reeves added, "The judiciary should not impose a third. If qualified immunity would do that, closing the courthouse doors to his claims, then the doctrine should come to its overdue end."