The Washington Post’s George Will was out with an important op-ed this week that shines a spotlight on the legal loophole of “qualified immunity,” a principle that gives lawsuit protection to government workers acting in an official capacity. Will’s piece centers on a U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals decision that prevented a family from suing anyone in a South Carolina prison where their inmate family member was strangled to death.
In 2017, four inmates were lured to the prison cell of two prisoners serving life sentences and systematically stomped, stabbed, and strangled to death one by one while guards failed to check in on obvious suspicious behavior. The victim of the family who brought the civil suit, John King, was lured to the murderous cell with the promise of coffee but was then strangled with an extension cord and stuffed under a bed — all while the prison cell door was covered up with a trash bag to obstruct the view.
King’s family argued that John’s death resulted from “deliberate indifference” by prison officials, but the appeals court affirmed a lower court decision that granted blanket immunity to all officials party to the civil suit. One appellant judge, James A. Wynn Jr., offered a scathing dissent, saying the pair of jailhouse murderers were able to circulate through the prison unit while four corpses went unnoticed in their cell during five separate checks.
Read or listen to the entire op-ed piece here.
Carla Conti is an award-winning true crime journalist, storyteller, and prison reform advocate. Her debut book, Chained Birds: A Crimemoir, won multiple 2025 national book awards, including 1st Place in True Crime from the Next Generation Indie Book Awards, Winner in True Crime from the Indie Reader Discovery Awards, Silver in True Crime from the Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY), and a 1st Place Nellie Bly Journalism award from the Chanticleer International Book Awards. Carla lives in Pennsylvania with her husband, who tolerates her true crime habit.
