Opinion ID: 2796556
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Applicability of the Fifth Amendment

Text: The notion that the Fourth Amendment provides the exclusive means of relief for Hernández is rooted in a strained and incorrect reading of Graham v. Connor. The Court in Graham held 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, rather than under a ‘substantive due process’ approach.” 490 U.S. at 395. The Court explained that “[b]ecause the Fourth Amendment provides an explicit textual source of constitutional protection against this sort of physically intrusive governmental conduct, that Amendment, not the more generalized notion of ‘substantive due process,’ must be the guide for analyzing these claims.” Id.