Justice for black Alabama pastor arrested for watering his neighbor's flowers while they were on vacation despite white woman who called 911 telling cops she made a mistake

The police officers who arrested a black pastor while he watered his neighbor's flowers can be sued, a federal appeals court has ruled, reversing a lower court judge's decision which had dismissed the pastor's lawsuit.

A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that the three officers who arrested Michael Jennings in Childersburg, Alabama, in May 2022 lacked probable cause for the arrest and are therefore not shielded by qualified immunity.

Qualified immunity protects officers from civil liability while performing their duties as long as their actions don't violate clearly established law or constitutional rights which they should have known about.

Jennings was arrested after a white neighbor reported him to police as he was watering his friend's garden while they were out of town. 

Cops received a complaint about a strange man and vehicle on the property. 

The responding officers said they arrested Jennings because he refused to provide a physical ID.

Body camera footage shows that the man repeatedly told officers he was 'Pastor Jennings' and that he lived across the street.

Jennings, who was seen in the clip watering the flowers with a hose, had just returned from Sunday service. He told police his long-term neighbor asked him to look after his shrubbery while he was out of town.

But despite his good intentions and other residents vouching for him - including a neighbor who is white - Jennings was taken to jail and later charged with obstruction of government operation and forced to post $500 bail to get out. 

Attorneys for Jennings argued that the footage shows that the officers decided to arrest Jennings without probable cause 'less than five minutes after' they arrived.

After insisting that he was just calmly gardening in the front yard, police asked Jennings: 'How do we know that's the truth?'

The baffled pastor, who lives in the house across the street, responded: 'I had the water hose in my hand! I was watering the flowers.'

Body camera footage showed three officers from Childersburg Police Department screaming at Jennings as he refused to provide identification - before he was ushered away in handcuffs. 

Jennings later learned the person who called 911 knew him but didn't recognize him when she called in the report. 

Laughing in disbelief during the encounter, the pastor tells the officers: 'Y'all racially profiled me.' 

A white resident could even be seen intervening as she told officers that Jennings lived next door -  insisting that he was friends with the homeowner who had left earlier that day.

'He lives right there,' the woman told police while pointing at Jennings' property. 

The pastor, from Vision of Abundant Life Ministries in Sylacauga, was arrested and placed in the backseat of the cop car. His mobile phone was also taken from him during the arrest.

'Does he have permission to be watering flowers?' police asked the woman. 

To which the neighbor responded: 'He may because they are friends, and they went out of town today and he may be watering their flowers. It would be completely normal.' 

She later added: 'This is probably my fault.' 

'This is a win for Pastor Jennings and a win for justice. The video speaks for itself,' said Harry Daniels, the lead attorney for Jennings. 

'Finally, Pastor Jennings will have his day in court and prove that wearing a badge does not give you the right to break the law.' 

Daniels previously told DailyMail.com that the pastor has struggled to move past the 'traumatic' incident.

'He's a pastor, he's a man of faith, but I would be remissive if I didn't tell you that what he's dealing with is very hard.

'A split moment he felt his life could have been taken from him if he showed any resistance, even though he was right in the video.' 

The pastor feared leaving to get his ID from his house and thought if he were to take off, the cops might 'put a bullet' in his back, according to Daniels.

When police asked Jennings to prove his identity, he refused since he knew - having  a background in law enforcement - that he was not obliged to because he was not committing a crime and was on private property.

Daniels said that the video clearly showed police denying Jennings his rights, and revealed the cops involved as Christopher Smith, J Gable, and Sgt. Jeremy Brooks. 

'If you noticed in the video, when a neighbor, the white lady said he lived [around] there, they took her word as the gospel, and the pastor who is preaching the gospel, they did not take his word at all.' 

The attorney added: 'A suit needs to be filled to prevent these things from happening - and put in front of law enforcement a notice that they cannot intimidate or harass, or abuse their powers.' 

Last December, Chief District Judge R. David Proctor had dismissed the case against the officers on the basis of qualified immunity.

Alabama law states officers have a right to request the name, address and explanation of a person in a public place if he 'reasonably suspects' that person is committing or about to commit a crime, but an officer does not have a legal right to demand physical identification, the 11th circuit court decision said.

Jennings was arrested on a charge of obstructing government operations. 

Those charges were dismissed within days at the request of the police chief. 

The pastor then filed a lawsuit a few months later, saying the ordeal violated his constitutional rights and caused lingering problems including emotional distress and anxiety.

The suit claims Jennings was falsely arrested - and he is claiming an unspecified amount of money. 

A GoFundMe account has so far raised $3,750 towards Jennings' mounting legal fees.

Daniels, the lead attorney for Jennings, said that the decision could affect other ongoing civil rights cases across the state.

'This has major implications for anyone who has been subjected to unlawful arrest because they wouldn't give their ID,' said Daniels.

Jennings was born in rural Alabama just three years after George C. Wallace pledged 'segregation forever' at the first of his four inaugurations as governor. 

His parents grew up during a time when racial segregation was the law and Black people were expected to act with deference to white people in the South.

'I know the backdrop,' Jennings said in a 2022 interview.

Meanwhile, the officers who confronted him work for a majority-white town of about 4,700 people that's located 55 miles southeast of Birmingham down U.S. 280.

Jennings went into the ministry not long after graduating from high school and hasn't strayed far from his birthplace of nearby Sylacauga, where he leads Vision of Abundant Life Ministries, a small, nondenominational church, when not doing landscaping work or selling items online. 

In 1991, he said, he worked security and then trained to be a police officer in a nearby town but left before taking the job full time.

'That's how I knew the law,' he explained. 

Alabama law allows police to ask for the name of someone in a public place when there's reasonable suspicion the person has committed or is about to commit a crime. 

But that doesn't mean a man innocently watering flowers at a neighbor's home must provide identification when asked by an officer, according to Hank Sherrod, a civil rights lawyer who reviewed the full police video.

'This is an area of the law that is pretty clear,' said Sherrod, who has handled similar cases in north Alabama, where he practices.

Jennings said he felt 'anger and fear' during his interaction with the Alabama police officers because of the accumulated weight of past police killings - George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others - plus lower-profile incidents and shootings in Alabama.

'That's why I didn't resist,' he said. 

Jennings is still friends with Roy Milam, the neighbor who asked him to look after his flowers. 

Milam, who is white, said he feels bad about what happened, and the two men will continue watching out for each other's homes, just as they've done for years.

'He is a good neighbor, definitely. No doubt about it,' Milam said.