SCOTT v. HARRIS, SCOTUS No. 05-1631, http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/06pdf/05-1631.pdf , on certiorari from USCA-11, opinion by Scalia, concurrences by Ginsburg, Breyer, dissent by Stevens, filed 30 Apr 2007.
LONG STORY SHORT: Police use of force to cause high-speed reckless driver to crash, thereby preventing him from posing further danger of death or serious harm to others, was a reasonable seizure and not a violation of the Fourth Amendment. Binding on ALL courts in and of the United States.
FACTS: At about 2230 one night, Deputy clocked Plaintiff at 73 in a 55 and activated his blue lights. Plaintiff continued on at speeds exceeding 85, down a mostly two-lane road as other officers, including Defendant, joined the pursuit. Plaintiff slowed down and entered a shopping center parking lot, but as officers almost had him boxed in, Plaintiff drove off again, colliding with and damaging Defendant's marked police car. Defendant became the lead unit in the chase [Note: On the tape, Defendant says "78, let me get him, my car's already tore up."] and followed Plaintiff through the night, with blue lights and siren on.
The videotape showed Plaintiff crossing double yellow lines, running through red lights, and swerving around cars on the road; other vehicles had already pulled over as the pursuit passed them. Six minutes and ten miles after the chase had begun, Defendant requested permission to perform a PIT maneuver (pursuit intervention technique that spins out the subject vehicle without damage to it or the pursuer unless they hit some other object), and Defendant's supervisor said "take him out." Defendant judged that he was unable to safely PIT Plaintiff, and instead accelerated enough to tap Plaintiff's rear bumper. [Note: On the tape, Defendant says "This'll be a real bad 10-50."] Plaintiff lost control and his vehicle ran off the road and into a light pole, rendering Plaintiff a permanent quadriplegic.
PROCEDURE: Plaintiff sued Defendant in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia per 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for excessive force and unreasonable seizure in violation of the Fourth Amendment. After discovery, which included production of the dashboard camera videotapes of the pursuing officers, Defendant moved for summary judgment on qualified immunity grounds, arguing that Plaintiff's actions posed such a serious hazard to life and safety of innocent people that Defendant's use of force to stop him was reasonable. The trial court ruled that issues of material fact remained, and a reasonable jury could find that Defendant's use of force was unreasonable. QUALIFIED IMMUNITY DENIED.
Defendant appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, which viewed the dash-cam tapes as part of its record review, and ruled that Defendant's pushing Plaintiff's car amounted to deadly force. The Eleventh Circuit evaluated the tapes as showing mostly empty roads and Plaintiff maintaining control of his vehicle, posing little threat to pedestrians and other motorists. On the facts so far, held the Eleventh Circuit, a reasonable jury could find that Defendant unreasonably seized Plaintiff and violated his Fourth Amendment rights. Also, it was clear to a reasonable officer at the time that ramming Plaintiff's vehicle was illegal, if the jury found the facts to be as Plaintiff alleged. DENIAL OF QUALIFIED IMMUNITY AFFIRMED. Defendant petitioned the Supreme Court of the United States for certiorari review, which was granted.
DECISION: Because the case arrived directly from the summary judgment stage, no jury had found any facts. Plaintiff's and Defendant's versions of the facts were understandably at odds, and often would be unreviewable, but as it happened, here the whole chase was on videotape. No one claimed that the tapes were altered or otherwise unfair, so they were fair game to help establish whether a reasonable factfinder could see things Plaintiff's way. Upon viewing the tapes, the Supreme Court ruled that the video evidence of a hair-raising high-speed Hollywood-style chase so totally discredited Plaintiff's version of the facts that no reasonable jury could possibly believe him. The Eleventh Circuit was in error, and should have viewed the facts in the light depicted by the videotape.
Next, the Supreme Court had to follow its own precedent and analyze Defendant's qualified immunity defense in two steps, first by deciding whether Defendant's actions violated one or more of Plaintiff's constitutional rights, and second, whether any violation was clearly established to reasonable officers at the time. Supreme Court precedent firmly established that officers must have probable cause to believe that a fleeing subject posed an immediate threat of serious physical harm to officers or others, that deadly force was the only way to stop the threat, and that when feasible the subject had warning that deadly force was about to happen. For example, shooting a young, skinny, unarmed man in the back of the head to keep him from getting away after a petty burglary would be unreasonable.
However, that example (Tennessee v. Garner to be exact) did not create a magical on/off switch triggering rigid preconditions to use of deadly force; it was just one application, among many, of the Fourth Amendment's reasonableness test. The facts here were very different, chiefly that Plaintiff's flight in a motor vehicle was itself the danger. Neither was the wrecking of Plaintiff's vehicle the near-certain death that a gunshot to the head would be. Plaintiff deliberately placed many people in grave danger, ignored blue lights and sirens, and had only himself to blame. The Supreme Court readily agreed with Defendant's application of force to the one, in order to protect the many.
Neither should Defendant have felt obligated to terminate pursuit and let Plaintiff go, in hopes that Plaintiff would slow down and calm down. First, Defendant had no assurance that Plaintiff would do that; for all Defendant knew, Plaintiff would figure that the police were taking a shortcut or calling ahead for a roadblock, and would keep on going. Second, should the Supreme Court set a rule that police must always terminate pursuit when subjects drive fast and recklessly enough, then all anybody has to do to escape police is to, well, drive fast and recklessly enough. This policy would reward scofflaws with immunity.
The rule, instead, shall be: A police officer's attempt to terminate a dangerous high-speed car chase that threatens the lives of innocent bystanders does not violate the Fourth Amendment, even when it places the fleeing motorist at risk of serious injury or death. Defendant is entitled to summary judgment in his favor. DENIAL OF QUALIFIED IMMUNITY REVERSED.
Justice Ginsburg's concurrence agreed with the result under these specific facts, but would not have set down the rule in the preceding paragraph, because such cases are so fact-specific.
Justice Breyer's concurrence agreed with the result under these specific facts, and agreed that the Court should not try to make one simple rule governing such cases. Justice Breyer also would have the Court recede from its rigid two-step qualified immunity analysis. Sometimes it makes more sense to go on with the second step (whether the law was clearly established at the time) and respect the traditional judicial reluctance to decide constitutional issues, instead of wasting judicial resources on the first step (did the officer's conduct violate constitutional rights) and unnecessarily address the Constitution when there is some way around it.
Justice Stevens' dissent would have affirmed the Eleventh Circuit and let the case go to trial. Upon his own viewing of the tape, he did not see any danger sufficient to justify Defendant's wrecking of Plaintiff, who often used his turn signal, did not run anyone off the road, and generally was not the stuff of Hollywood. The police could have abandoned the chase and arrested Plaintiff later, as many police department policies would dictate. The Court usurped the jury's factfinding function and should not have set a per se rule for interrupting police pursuits.
EDITORIAL: Everybody go to the Supreme Court website, www.supremecourtus.gov , and download that dash-cam tape (you'll need RealPlayer) to see what they're talking about. You half expect to hear Sheriff John Bunnell doing a voiceover. I'll say it's not THE worst chase video I've ever seen, but it ranks right up there. Sure enough, this knucklehead is speeding, crossing double yellow lines, running stoplights, and taking it to the parking lot. I saw exactly why the defendant officer said his car was already tore up--because Crash Test Dummy rammed him! So you have a driver using serious or deadly force against an officer--and then running off for more of the same--in the middle of the night down dark country roads, and the Eleventh Circuit says "well, okeydoke!"? Pray givest thou unto me a break.
In a footnote, Justice Stevens says the real problem is that the eight young whippersnappers sitting next to him didn't learn to drive properly; that is, they grew up on four-lane interstates, while when HE was coming up, people knew how to pass slowpokes correctly even on two-lane roads. Kids these days! (It's supposed to have been the original Chief Justice, John Marshall, who first moaned "oh, to be 70 again.") Sorry, Justice Stevens, some of us still drive mostly on two-lane roads, and I can garontee, that guy was off the chain. It means nothing to me that some drivers had the good sense to pull over before the chase got there, because the roadside is dangerous and you can get run over when sitting dead still. Also, you can't hear police sirens (as opposed to ambulance and firetruck sirens) until they're almost on you, regardless of what the DOT tests certify.
So we now have more or less a blank check for terminating dangerous pursuits any which way we can. This decision SEEMS to legalize even firing shots at a vehicle so long as you don't aim to kill anybody. But remember, while you may not have any Fourth Amendment/Section 1983 problem, you may have a BIG state-law problem if your state legislatures step into the gap, and a BIG unemployment problem if what you did gets ruled "out of policy." You also have to live with what you do, which in this case, was putting a 19-year-old in a wheelchair forever. I guess it's only slightly less bad than HIM doing the same or worse to others. Lord's peace on Deputy Scott, and may you never have to do anything like that again.
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