Shane M. Gates v. Walter Reed, et al.
SocialSecurity FifthAmendment DueProcess
1. Whether the Court of Appeals erred by failing to recognize that a District Attorney, who in his private law practice represented, and received hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees from, the liability insurer for the Parish (county) served by that District Attorney, both violated the Hobbs Act (18 U.S.C. § 1951, et seq.) and denied a criminal defendant substantive due process when that District Attorney used the authority of his public office to institute and maintain a misdemeanor criminal prosecution at the behest of that insurer and for the purpose of bolstering that insurer's defense of a civil lawsuit for the tort of excessive force that was filed as a civil rights action by the misdemeanor defendant against the Sheriff of that Parish and others.
2. Whether the Court of Appeals erred in upholding the District Court's dismissal of two civil rights suits against a District Attorney and a Sheriff, on the alleged ground that the plaintiff had failed to prosecute his civil suit when, in fact, that District Court had stayed the plaintiff's suit on the defendants' motion.
3. Whether the Court of Appeals erred as a matter of law when it denied a misdemeanor defendant an injunction against DUI and resisting arrest prosecutions against him, where those misdemeanor cases' continued prosecution denied him important substantive and procedural due process rights, including among others denial of a speedy trial in violation of both state statute and the Sixth Amendment, improper reuse of evidence previously rejected by a felony trial jury so as to subject him to double jeopardy, spoliation of evidence, forgery of both prosecution documents and of portions of the state court criminal case record, and irremediable conflicts of interest on the part of the prosecutors.
Whether a District Attorney violated the Hobbs Act and denied due process by prosecuting a misdemeanor case at the behest of a liability insurer