united-states official-immunity
Can officials enjoy immunity for any crime by asserting they acted in official capacity?
<p>Government officials in the United States enjoy broad immunity from personal and criminal liability for "official" actions.</p>

<p>However, <a href="https://law.stackexchange.com/q/17025/10">even the sitting U.S. President is not immune to being tried for crimes committed "unofficially"</a>.  Yet I can imagine an official making a colorable argument that <em>any</em> action was performed in an "official" capacity – especially when that official is the government's chief executive.  Take an extreme hypothetical: The President murders someone in cold blood.  Rather than evade detection for the crime, and rather than raising traditional defenses at trial, he simply declares, "I killed that person in my official capacity."  After all, the President orders extra-judicial killings all the time.</p>

<p>Take the hypothetical down the line to beat police officers, who (as a whole) often kill people in their official capacity, and who claim they are "never off-duty."</p>

<p>What laws determine how claims of immunity for "acting in official capacity" should be adjudicated?</p>

<p>There are two kinds of immunity: absolute and qualified.</p>

<p>Absolute immunity is limited to the official discretionary acts of judges, prosecutors in the litigation process (but not in the investigatory process) and the President. And, in the cases of judges and prosecutors this is only immunity from civil liability and not criminal liability.</p>

<p>Thus, for judges the scope of absolute immunity extends to legal rulings and conduct related to being a judge in a courtroom. In the case of a prosecutor, it pertains to litigation conduct (but not conduct physically dealing with a defendant or investigating a crime). This is usually an open and shut question which can be determined on the face of the legal complaint against the official.</p>

<p>Only the President has relatively broad kinds of activities covered and his saying he is immune doesn't mean that a judge trying a case will agree with him. If he's murdering his wife, no judge will believe that he's acting in his official capacity to do so.</p>

<p>Other government officials generally have only "qualified immunity" which means that they have liability if they intentionally violate clearly established law, which basically means that there is a binding judicial precedent governing the facts and circumstances at issue.</p>

<p>If the prosecution believed that the act wasn't in an official capacity and the defence believed it was then that is a fact that the court would need to determine.</p>
