By Justin Jouvenal — Supreme Court rules totality of circumstances must be considered in police shootings.
The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Thursday that the totality of circumstances must be considered when determining whether a police shooting is justified, not just the split seconds before an officer opens fire.
The broader standard is likely to make it easier for victims to prove allegations of excessive force in court.
The high court revived a lawsuit by the mother of Ashtian Barnes, 24, who alleged that Harris County, Texas, Officer Roberto Felix Jr. used excessive force when he opened fire on Barnes during a stop for suspected toll violations in Houston.
The New Orleans-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit granted summary judgment for Felix, using the circuit’s “moment-of-threat rule” that requires asking only whether an officer was “in danger at the moment of the threat that resulted in [his] use of deadly force.”
The justices sent the lawsuit back to the lower court for reconsideration under its broader standard.
“To assess whether an officer acted reasonably in using force, a court must consider all the relevant circumstances, including facts and events leading up to the climactic moment,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the court.
Felix pulled Barnes over in April 2016. During the stop, Felix ordered Barnes to get out of his vehicle, but Barnes began to drive away. As the car began to move, Felix jumped on the doorsill and fired two shots inside. Barnes was fatally injured but managed to bring the car to a stop. Two seconds elapsed between when Felix stepped on the doorsill and when he fired his first shot.
The officer’s dashboard camera recorded their deadly encounter, which lasted several minutes.
The Supreme Court has held that law enforcement officers can be held liable for police shootings or other uses of force if they use deadly force without a reasonable belief that a person presents an imminent threat of harm to others or the officer.
One of the 5th Circuit judges asked the high court to clarify for courts nationwide how judges should determine when deadly force is reasonable and constitutional.
Judge Patrick E. Higginbotham lamented in a separate opinion that a routine traffic stop “has again ended in the death of an unarmed black man, and again we cloak a police officer with qualified immunity, shielding his liability.” He called attention to the issue of what judges may consider, writing that the 5th Circuit’s narrow standard constrains its analysis to the “precise millisecond at which an officer deploys deadly force.”
That standard, Higginbotham wrote, requires judges to ignore “the reality of the role the officers played in bringing about the conditions said to necessitate deadly force.”
