In the justice system, marginalized people like Daniel Reiff don’t stand a chance — or so the cop’s lawyers argued.
He was a high school dropout with a long history of drug and mental health problems who had been in and out of psychiatric hospitals. He left home in his teens, developed a taste for heroin, got arrested repeatedly, wound up homeless at times, and was convicted three times of resisting and obstructing police.
So when he wound up a plaintiff in a police brutality lawsuit — he lost an eye after getting punched by an officer — the defense tried to get the suit thrown out, maintaining the officer was protected by immunity, and that there’s no way Reiff could convince a jury to award him anything substantial…