Innocent Woman Appeals Lower Court’s Ruling Granting Immunity to St. Paul Police Officer Whose Lies Landed Her in Prison for Two Years

ARLINGTON, Va.—Last week, three different legal groups submitted amicus briefs in Mohamud v. Weyker urging the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn a lower court’s ruling that prevented an innocent woman, Hamdi Mohamud, from holding St. Paul, Minnesota Police Officer Heather Weyker accountable for violating Hamdi’s constitutional rights. Hamdi sued Weyker for weaving a web of lies that landed Hamdi in federal prison for nearly two years based on a crime she didn’t commit. 

The amicus briefs—filed by the Cato Institute, Goldwater Institute and New Civil Liberties Alliance—call on the appeals court to allow Hamdi’s lawsuit to move ahead after the Institute for Justice (IJ) and Hamdi appealed the lower court’s ruling that dismissed the lawsuit against Weyker. 

“Unfortunately, federal immunity shields most federal officials from accountability when they violate the Constitution. That unjustifiable protection is now being extended to state and local officers like Heather Weyker through the proliferation of state-federal task forces,” said IJ Senior Attorney Patrick Jaicomo. “We’re grateful to have support from across the political spectrum as we fight against the growing threat of immunity to our constitutional rights.” 

In 2011, Hamdi—who was 16 at the time—witnessed a fight between her friends and another girl named Muna. The fight escalated when Muna pulled out a knife and struck one of Hamdi’s friends. When the victims called the police, the responding officers originally suspected that Muna had committed a crime. Unbeknownst to Hamdi and her friends, however, Weyker was concocting a sham human trafficking investigation, and Muna was her star witness. To keep Muna out of legal trouble, Weyker injected herself into the altercation, lied to the responding officers, and convinced them to arrest Hamdi and her friends instead of their attacker. 

Because of Weyker’s lies, Hamdi spent two years in federal prison before the charges against her were dropped. When Hamdi got out, she sued Weyker as both a state and federal agent because Weyker was a St. Paul police officer cross-deputized by the U.S. Marshal Service for task force work.  

In a series of cases, the 8^th Cir. has decided several issues relevant to Hamdi’s lawsuit. First, when Weyker claimed qualified immunity, the 8th Circuit denied her because “a reasonable officer would know that deliberately misleading another officer into arresting an innocent individual to protect a sham investigation is unlawful[.]” Second, the 8th Circuit held that if Weyker was acting exclusively as a federal agent, she could not be sued at all. Even so, the court ruled that Hamdi’s lawsuit could proceed if she could prove Weyker was acting under color of state law when she violated Hamdi’s rights. Third, in a case brought by one of Hamdi’s friends, the 8th Circuit concluded that Weyker was acting as a federal official on the day of the fight and, thus, could not be sued at all. 

Soon after the 8^th Cir. decided the case brought by Hamdi’s friend, Hamdi discovered previously withheld government documents showing that Weyker was, in fact, acting as a state officer when she framed Hamdi. These documents establish that St. Paul Police Department and the federal government routinely understand cross-deputized officers like Weyker to act under color of state—not federal—law.  

But when Hamdi filed an amended complaint in June 2023 to bring this never-before-seen evidence to light, the district court dismissed her case. Now, Hamdi and her amici are asking the 8th Circuit to reverse and instruct the district court to give this new evidence the weight it deserves.