On May 13, 2022, a federal judge ruled that our client Jerry Rogers is "entitled to judgment in his favor" on constitutional and state-law claims of false arrest and false imprisonment.

The case involves the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff's office’s 2019 arrest of Jerry Rogers, a former sheriff's deputy who now works as an federal investigator.

In a series of private emails, Mr. Rogers had criticized a STPSO deputy regarding the failure to solve a high-profile murder. Defendants – three members of the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office including Sheriff Randy Smith – found out about the criticism, and reacted by arresting Rogers under a criminal defamation statute that had been declared unconstitutional as applied nearly a half-century earlier.

Defendants arrested Rogers even though they were warned twice in advance by the District Attorney’s office that arresting Rogers would be unconstitutional.

But despite all this, each Defendant has testified that they would arrest Jerry Rogers all over again, even knowing what they know now.

These facts led federal judge Triche Milazzo of the Eastern District of Louisiana to conclude that:

no reasonable officer could have believed that probable cause existed where the unconstitutionality of Louisiana’s criminal defamation statute as applied to public officials has long been clearly established and where the officers had been specifically warned that the arrest would be unconstitutional.

She therefore ruled that "Plaintiff is entitled to judgment in his favor on his claim for § 1983 false arrest and state law false arrest and false imprisonment against Defendants Canizaro and Culpeper in their individual capacities."