quote Originally posted by twofatguys: Could be the wrong name, False imprisonment may be more correct, I believe you can be held for 24 hours with no legal recourse for no reasons at all, simply "suspicion" is enough. After that time it becomes false imprisonment. Shyster, could you explain how this works in your State? I understand you would not be giving legal advise, simply stating what you understand the law to be.

I'm hardly an authority on false arrest / imprisonment. The criminal work I do is all on the appellate side, and has largely involved trying to reverse the results obtained when over-zealous prosecutors ignore their duty to do justice.

So, the following is taken from an unpublished 2011 case out of the Beaumont court of appeals (Rogers v. Owings), with the citations removed from the text. It's not great, but it is a synopsis on what does, or does not, constitute "false arrest" in Texas:

quote The right to be free from arrest without probable cause is a clearly established constitutional right. The constitutional claim of false arrest requires a showing of no probable cause. Post-hoc justifications based on facts later learned cannot support an earlier arrest. The facts must be particularized to the arrestee. We apply an objective standard, which means that we will find that probable cause existed if the officer was aware of facts justifying a reasonable belief that an offense was being committed, whether or not the officer charged the arrestee with that specific offense. Even law enforcement officials who ‘reasonably but mistakenly conclude that probable cause is present’ are entitled to immunity. A qualified immunity defense cannot succeed where it is obvious that a reasonably competent officer would find no probable cause, but if officers of reasonable competence could disagree on this issue, immunity should be recognized. Regardless of whether the officer had authority under state law to make the arrest, the arrest is valid under constitutional principles so long as the officer had probable cause to arrest.

Now, you may note that this is a very soft standard. The officer can be wrong, but if he or she is wrong in a "reasonable" manner, qualified immunity applies and the officer (and therefore, the State) is immune from suit. BUT, it's a two-edged sword. If you have them by the short ones, they can't walk, even if they "find" justification for the arrest after the fact. For example, A gets arrested for drug possession, because he's standing on a public sidewalk within 300 yards of a known crack house, it's 2:00 am, and the cops have nothing better to do. While frisking him, they find his car keys. They ask where his car is, bring out a drug dog, who alerts at the car, so they get a warrant, and low as a bee-hole, there are 5 kilos in the trunk.

Was he in possession? Yep. It's still false arrest.

False imprisonment is an intentional tort, and appears to fall within the exclusions from the Texas Tort Claims Act (Texas Civil Practice & Remedies Code sect. 101.057), which is to say, you cannot sue Texas or a state official for false imprisonment. (The TTCA is a qualified waiver of "sovereign immunity," and, since liability for false imprisonment is excluded from the TTCA, sovereign immunity applies.)

Even for false arrest, if I were even going to think about taking on such a case, I'd want to have facts that make you sit up and go "WOW!!" There's too much wiggle room in the standard to even hope to be successful, otherwise.

[This message has been edited by Shyster (edited 03-30-2012).]