Source: https://www.helbraunlaw.com/legal-rules-governing-the-degree-of-force-used-in-an-arrest.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 16:44:50+00:00

Document:
The Fourth Amendment prohibits “unreasonable searches and seizures.” Because the use of force to make an arrest is a seizure under the Fourth Amendment, the use of such force cannot be unreasonable. The Supreme Court’s precedential rulings on reasonableness can be found in three key cases: Graham v. Conner,Tennessee v. Garner, and Scott v. Harris.  At the heart of each of these cases are the analysis and factors set forth in Graham.
To determine whether the forced used was reasonable, judges, juries, and prosecutors use the test laid out in Graham v. Conner. In Graham, the eponymous victim was suffering the onset of insulin shock.  He asked a friend to drive him to a convenience store to get some orange juice to counteract the shock, but upon finding a long line at the checkout counter, he asked to instead be driven to another friend’s house.  Officer Conner suspected something was amiss after seeing Graham quickly enter and leave the store and pulled the car over, initiating an investigatory stop. Not believing that Graham was suffering from insulin shock, Conner told Graham and the driver to wait while he found out what happened at the convenience store. Graham eventually exited the car and passed out on the curb.  By this time, backup officers had arrived. They handcuffed Graham, threw him against the hood of a patrol car, and then tossed him headfirst into the back of the car. Upon finding out that nothing happened at the convenience store, the officers released Graham.  However, their treatment of him during the arrest resulted in: “a broken foot, cuts on his wrists, a bruised forehead, . . . an injured shoulder[,]” and a persistent ringing in his right ear.
The Graham test thus removes the subjective inquiry into why the particular officer inflicted the force. Instead, the reasonableness of the force is determined from the “perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene,” an objective analysis . Therefore, an officer’s good intentions will not sway the analysis in favor of reasonableness, nor will their bad intentions make the use of force more unreasonable.
C. Scott addresses the distinction (or lack thereof) between Garner and Graham.
In Scott, deputies initiated a high speed chase after Harris failed to pull over for speeding. After evading officers’ attempt to box him in at a shopping center parking lot, the high speed chase resumed with Officer Scott as the lead car. Scott applied his bumper to Harris’ vehicle in an attempt to stop his car and end the chase. The maneuver caused Harris to lose control of his vehicle and crash into an embankment. Scott was seriously injured and rendered paraplegic.  The chase lasted approximately six minutes and ran for nearly ten miles, down what was mostly a two lane road, at speeds exceeding eighty-five miles per hour.
In applying the Graham analysis to Harris’ case, the Court, interestingly, did not explicitly use all three factors expressed in Graham. Rather, the Court restated the general Fourth Amendment balancing rule  and then considered the second factor: the immediacy of the threat Harris posed to the safety of the officers or others. Relying on the police video of the chase, the Court immediately found Harris posed an “actual and imminent threat” to officers, pedestrians, and other motorists. Addressing the overall balancing inquiry, the Court weighed the threat to Harris that Scott’s use of force posed, against the imminent threat Harris’ continued reckless driving posed to the officers and public. The Court speculated that the risk of harm to both sides was high, but that the risk to Harris may have been higher. To resolve the issue, the Court looked at the culpability of both sides. Upon finding the officers and bystanders quite innocent, and Harris quite culpable, since he “intentionally placed himself and the public in danger by unlawfully engaging in the reckless, high-speed flight,” the Court had “little difficulty” in finding Scott’s use of force reasonable.
Some of the more controversial alleged facts of the case, such as that Brown never turned and moved back toward Wilson and that Wilson shot Brown as he was running away or had his hands up in surrender, were not relied on by the DOJ because witness accounts stating as much were inconsistent with the physical evidence and credible witness accounts.
Turning to the shots fired when Wilson and Brown were both on the street, the DOJ first reiterated that all the physical evidence and credible witness reports indicated that Wilson shot Brown as he was moving, running, or charging toward Wilson. The DOJ then returned to the “key” question of “whether Brown could reasonably have been perceived to pose a deadly threat to Wilson.”  In finding Wilson could reasonably have perceived Brown as a threat, the DOJ made the following conclusions. First, Wilson had reason to believe Brown may have been armed when Brown reached into his waistband as he was moving toward Wilson.  Given Brown’s aggressive action at Wilson’s vehicle, and “in light of the rapidly-evolving nature of the incident,” “Wilson did not have time to determine whether Brown had a gun and was not required to risk being shot himself in order to make a more definitive assessment.” Second, even if Brown never reached into his waistband, the DOJ determined that Wilson still could have reasonably perceived a deadly threat, given Brown’s advancement toward him and refusal to yield to Wilson’s commands to stop. In reaching this second conclusion, the DOJ relied on the holding of Loch v. City of Litchfield, where “[a]lthough the suspect’s ‘arms were raised above his head or extended at his sides,’ the Court of Appeals held that a reasonable officer could have perceived the suspect’s forward advance in the face of the officer’s commands to stop as resistance and a threat.” For these reasons the DOJ decided that it was not objectively unreasonable for Wilson to have used deadly force.
While the use of force by police officers continues to be a topic of fervent public debate, because of the nature of the law, the rules broadly described above will be in force for some time. Thus, judges, juries, and prosecutors will continue to rely on them to determine whether the force used was constitutional. Citizens who believe they have been subjected to unreasonable force should not be discouraged, however, from asserting their rights in light of the recent high profile cases that did not result in an indictment or conviction. The Fourth Amendment clearly protects a citizen’s right to be free from unreasonable seizures, and those who believe their rights have been violated should consult with an experienced civil rights attorney to discuss their options.
 E.g. , Christy J. Millweard & KVUE Staff, Bystanders Accuse Austin Police of Excessive Force, KVUE (June 8, 2015), http://www.kvue.com/story/news/local/2015/06/07/bystanders-accuse-austin-police-of-excessive-force/28642919/ (describing officer’s use of mace); Jacquellena Aarrero & M. Alex Johnson, McKinney, Texas, Cop Placed on Leave After Pulling Gun on Teens at Pool Party, NBC News (June 8, 2015), http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/mckinney-texas-officer-leave-after-wild-pool-party-video-surfaces-n371281 (describing officer’s use of physical force and brandishing of weapon); Bob Kealing, Did Orlando Police Officer Use Excessive Force When Kicking Suspect?, WPTV (June 9, 2015), http://www.wptv.com/news/state/noel-carter-did-orlando-police-officer-use-excessive-force-when-kicking-suspect (describing officer’s use of physical force and taser).
 Ferguson Unrest: From Shooting to Nationwide Protests , BBC News (Mar. 12, 2015), http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-30193354 (describing the circumstances and aftermath of the death of Michael Brown).
 Monica Davey & Julie Bosman, Protests Flare after Ferguson Police Officer Is Not Indicted, NY Times (Nov. 24, 2014), http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/25/us/ferguson-darren-wilson-shooting-michael-brown-grand-jury.html?_r=0 .
 The purpose of this article is not to question whether the legal rules governing the use of force were properly applied in the examples given, or even whether the rules themselves are just or unjust.
 U.S. Const. amend. IV., available at https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/fourth_amendment.
 Graham v. Conner, 490 U.S. 386, 395 (1989) (holding “that all claims that law enforcement officers have used excessive force—deadly or not—in the course of an arrest, investigatory stop, or other ‘seizure’ of a free citizen should be analyzed under the Fourth Amendment and its ‘reasonableness’ standard).
 Graham v. Conner, 490 U.S. 386 (1989).
 Scott v. Harris, 550 U.S. 372 (2007).
 Cal. Penal Code § 835a (West 2015), available at http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?file=833-851.90&group=00001-01000&section=pen .
 Cal. Penal Code § 843 (West 2015), available at http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?file=833-851.90&group=00001-01000&section=pen .
 Cal. Penal Code § 834a (West 2015), available at http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?file=833-851.90&group=00001-01000&section=pen .
 Id. at 396 (citing Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1, 8–9 (1985)).
 Id. at 396 (“[P]roper application [of the test] requires careful attention to the facts and circumstances of each particular case[.]”) (citing Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1, 8–9 (1985)).
 Id. at 397 (citing Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 20–22 (1968)).
 Id. (citing Scott v. United States, 436 U.S. 128, 137–139 (1978)).
 Rachel A. Harmon, When is Police Violence Justified?, 102 Nw. U. L. Rev. 1119, 1128–29 (2008), available at http://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=318115065115119121006079071003020087017069064045069066075088121069073002022121127018022103030104056120001030119086086002112080117022094008013004029017097125114005112065073085001068009031002119011095084085107070098090015110119107122030019104027095066&EXT=pdf&TYPE=2 .
 See Harmon, supra note 37, at 1134–35.
 Id. at 382 (2007) (internal citations omitted); Harmon, supra note 37, at 1137.
 Id. at 383–86; Harmon, supra note 37, at 1135–37.
 Scott at 383; see supra note 30 and accompanying text.
 Plumhoff v. Rickard, 143 S. Ct. 2012, 2017 (2014).
 Dep’t of Justice, Department of Justice Report Regarding the Criminal Investigation into the Shooting Death of Michael Brown by Ferguson, Missouri Police Officer Darren Wilson at 4 (2015), available at http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/press-releases/attachments/2015/03/04/doj_report_on_shooting_of_michael_brown_1.pdf [hereinafter Dep’t of Justice].
 E.g. , Ferguson Unrest: From Shooting to Nationwide Protests, supra note 2.
 Much of the evidence presented to the grand jury is easily accessible to the public. E.g., Documents Released in the Ferguson Case, NY Times (Dec. 15, 2014), http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/11/25/us/evidence-released-in-michael-brown-case.html .
 E.g. , Moni Basu, Holly Yan & Dana Ford, Fires, Chaos Erupt in Ferguson After Grand Jury Doesn't Indict in Michael Brown Case, CNN (Nov. 25, 2014), http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/24/justice/ferguson-grand-jury/.
 Dep’t of Justice, supra note 71, at 5.
 Id. at 81 (citing Nelson v. County of Wright, 162 F.3d 986, 990–91 (8th Cir. 1998)).
 Nelson v. County of Wright , 162 F.3d 986 (8th Cir. 1998).
 Dep’t of Justice, supra note 71, at 81.
 Loch v. City of Litchfield, 689 F.3d 961 (8th Cir. 2012).
 Dep’t of Justice, supra note 71, at 84 (citing Loch v. City of Litchfield 689 F.3d 961, 966 (8th Cir. 2012)).

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