A woman is dead and the man who shot her walks away untouched.

Families are shattered, a nation divided, and one phrase hangs over everything: “absolute immunity.”

How can killing someone at the wheel of her own car lead to no criminal charges, no civil trial, no day in court?

The answer lies buried in complex statutes, federal protections, and a standard for prosecuting officers set so impossibly high that almost no case ever breaks through.

The immigration officer’s freedom from prosecution rests on a powerful shield: broad legal protections for law enforcement acting in the line of duty.

Under Minnesota law, deadly force is justified if a “reasonable officer” would believe it necessary to prevent death or serious harm.

Federal standards mirror this, and prosecutors must prove not just a bad decision, but that the officer knowingly acted with reckless disregard for human life.

That threshold is rarely met.

In this case, officials quickly framed the shooting as part of the officer’s job, invoking “absolute immunity” and

signaling that neither criminal charges nor civil claims were likely to succeed.

Federal officers are largely insulated from lawsuits unless they clearly violate a well-established constitutional right, a bar courts seldom find crossed.

For Good’s family, that means unbearable loss without legal closure, and a haunting question about accountability that the system may never fully answer.