An innocent 18-year-old was beaten by police in his bed. A jury awarded him $18.

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published 1 September 2016

Eighteen-year-old DeShawn Franklin of South Bend, Indiana, awoke at 2:30 a.m. when police officers burst into his room and began beating him in his bed. They Tased the high school student and dragged him out of his house and down to the cruiser, where Franklin was cuffed and arrested. Then they realized he was innocent.

Franklin's traumatizing encounter with the cops, who were looking for a suspect with a similar description, happened in 2012 and was addressed in a civil rights suit this August. A jury agreed police violated Franklin's civil rights when they entered the house without warrant or permission — but awarded his family only $18 in damages, $1 from each of the six officers to each family member (Franklin and his mom and dad). On top of that, the city demands the Franklin family cover $1,500 in court expenses.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.

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