The defense would be the state, the state failed to argue he didn’t deserve it, and the ACLU their cut. I don’t remember if the article said it was by judge or jury, but even when a jury comes out with X number a judge can still say “yeah no that’s too high, I’m awarding Y instead.” So either way it was achieved, a judge felt that this was a fair number. Idk what to say beyond that other than I wish I could make 100k off something so silly but that is a lot of bullshit to put up with to be right. ACLU deserves some cut for doing probably all this man’s legal grunt work and legal time since he likely didn’t pay out of pocket for a retainer.
But I get what you mean about tax dollars. It should have come from the department something more tangible for the state patrol to not do this again