Category: Use of Force

Supreme Court Takes Up Law Enforcement Related Cases

by · Oct 4, 2024 10:19 am

The U.S. Supreme Court issued a short orders list from Monday’s pre-term conference, adding 15 cases to the docket for the October 2024 Term. A much longer list of cases turned down will likely be issued next Monday at the formal opening of the term.

Continuing the high court’s frustrating lack of interest in criminal law, the list includes only one actual criminal case, Thompson v. United States, No. 23-1095. This case raises the question of whether the federal law against false statements to financial institutions and federal agencies extends to misleading half truths. An aspect of the case that increases its media profile is the fact that defendant Patrick Daley Thompson is the grandson of Chicago’s notoriously corrupt mayor Richard J. Daley and the nephew of later mayor Richard M. Daley.

There are also several law-enforcement-related civil cases, a category that gets more interest from SCOTUS:

Gutierrez v. Saenz, No. 23-7809, is a federal civil rights suit regarding a Texas capital case. It presents somewhat complex issues regarding DNA testing, standing, and distinctions between innocence claims and sentencing claims.

Barnes v. Felix, No. 23-1239, is a police use-of-force case involving the “moment of threat doctrine.” As described by the petitioner (i.e., the plaintiff suing the police officer), this approach “evaluates the reasonableness of an officer’s actions only in the narrow window when the officer’s safety was threatened, and not based on events that precede the moment of the threat.” In the Fifth Circuit, Judge Higginbotham wrote a concurrence to his own majority opinion asking the Supreme Court to resolve the circuit split on this issue. Continue reading . . .

Qualified Immunity and Armchair Quarterbacks

by · Apr 1, 2024 11:12 am

Four years ago, Daniel Hernandez died on the street in Los Angeles because of his own inexcusable act of coming at a police office with a raised knife* in his hand and continuing after repeated warnings. So, as is common these days, there were protests and a lawsuit claiming that the police violated his civil rights.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s dismissal of the federal civil rights actions on March 21 in Estate of Hernandez v. City of Los Angeles, though it held that state-law claims can go forward. Parsing the various shots fired by Officer Toni McBride, the court held that the first and second volleys were clearly justified but a third pair of shots presented a question of excessive force. Qualified immunity applies, though, because the law is not clearly established regarding the later shots. This holding raises the usual squeals that the qualified immunity standard is too restrictive, requiring a precedent that is a factual match. See, e.g., this article by Kevin Rector in the LA Times.

I agree with the Ninth Circuit’s legal analysis of the qualified immunity question. It correctly applies U.S. Supreme Court precedents on the subject. What I find troubling about the case, though, is the exercise of people in their comfortable offices carefully parsing video of an event on the street that happened in mere seconds. Continue reading . . .

Dangerous New DOJ Policy On Chokeholds and “No-Knock” Warrants

by · Sep 15, 2021 11:39 am

A new memo released from the Department of Justice (DOJ) by Attorney General Merrick Garland makes policy changes that have the potential to endanger the lives of federal agents, as well as the limit the seizure of criminal evidence.  According to the memo released September 14th, 2021, the DOJ is changing policy effective immediately regarding the use of chokeholds and “no-knock” warrants.  The change appears inspired by the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.  Officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of causing Floyd’s death by using a form of a chokehold to pin him down after he resisted arrest.  Breonna Taylor died in a shootout which began when her current boyfriend shot at police executing a “no-knock” warrant to arrest her former boyfriend, drug dealer Jamarcus Glover.   Continue reading . . .

Supreme Court Sends Excessive Force Case Back to USCA8

by · Jun 28, 2021 8:44 am

The U.S. Supreme Court issued two summary decisions today. In Lombardo v. St. Louis, No. 20-391, the Court sent a case back to the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, a procedure known as “grant, vacate, and remand” or GVR. The case involves the death in custody of likely suicidal prisoner who was very actively resisting officers’ attempts to subdue him. Ironically, they caused the very result he tried to inflict on himself–death by asphyxiation.

Quoting a 2015 precedent, the unsigned opinion for the majority says that deciding claims such as these “requires careful attention to the facts and circumstances of each particular case.” See the problem here? Continue reading . . .

Will Liberals Now Awaken to the Legitimacy of Police Display, and Use, of Force?

by · Jan 9, 2021 12:13 pm

This last week’s invasion of the Capitol by a mob seeking to prevent Vice President Pence from counting the electoral votes and certifying the election result leaves us with very few positives.  The country is rightly shocked that a mob would think it has the right to take the law into its own hands, and that this belief extended even to the most fundamental aspect of democratic self-rule (the peaceful transfer of power through legal process). At least one police officer and at least one rioter were killed in the melee.

There may be one silver lining, however.  Liberals (and not a few libertarians) may have awakened to the previously Neanderthals-only idea that we need police with sufficient numbers, weapons, confidence and authority forcibly to keep the peace against those who threaten it.

Continue reading . . .