Cops Denied Qualified Immunity After Arresting Sober Teenager for DUI

Two police officers who arrested an Iowa college student for driving while intoxicated—even though a breathalyzer test showed he was completely sober—do not get qualified immunity protections for their actions, a panel of federal judges ruled Friday. 

In 2022, then-19-year-old Tayvin Galanakis was driving in Newton, Iowa, when two police officers—Nathan Winters and Christopher Wing—pulled him over and began asking how much alcohol he had consumed. When Galanakis denied drinking, Winters replied, “What do you mean none?”

Body camera footage of the incident shows Galanakis repeatedly asking to take a breathalyzer test. However, instead of administering a test, Winters required Galanakis to undergo a series of complex field sobriety tests. When Winters finally administered a breathalyzer test, it showed Galanakis’ blood alcohol content was 0.00. Almost immediately afterward, Winters began accusing Glanakis of being high on marijuana.

“I’ve had no weed tonight,” Galanakis told Winters. “I blew a zero, so now you’re trying to think I smoked weed? That’s what’s going on. You can’t do that, man. You really can’t do that.”

The officers were undeterred and arrested Galanakis, taking him to a local police station, where additional drug testing revealed that Galanakis had not consumed marijuana—or any other substances—before driving. Galanakis sued the officers in February 2023, alleging that his arrest was a “gross disregard of [his] civil rights.”

A lengthy legal battle followed Galanakis’ suit. Winters and Wing filed a counterclaim—arguing that several derogatory comments Galanakis left on the lightly edited footage and social media posts defamed them, though most of those claims were dismissed in May 2023. Last year, a district court judge denied the officers qualified immunity. They appealed, and last week, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals reaffirmed the district court’s ruling that the pair were not eligible for qualified immunity. 

“No officer could reasonably conclude that there was a substantial chance that Galanakis was under the influence of marijuana,” wrote Judge Jane L. Kelly of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in an opinion released Friday. “Galanakis evinced almost no indica of intoxication: no erratic driving; no odor of marijuana; no watery or bloodshot eyes; no staggering or physical instability; no refusal to take sobriety tests—rather, he twice asked to take a breathalyzer test.” 

While it’s often incredibly difficult for police officers to lose qualified immunity protections, Kelly notes that Winter and Wing simply had no reason to believe that Galanakis was impaired.

“Galanakis’s movements and behavior captured on Winters’s body camera footage suggest the opposite of intoxication,” Kelly writes. “As the district court found, and as the footage shows, ‘Galanakis was moving confidently and directing subtle and not-so-subtle verbal jabs at Winters in a manner that would have been difficult for an impaired person.’” 

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