Court Opinion

ID: 9426613
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:18:27.348114+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:01.930833
License: Public Domain

Mr. Chief Justice Burger,
concurring.
I join the opinion of the Court. I note, however, several additional factors which came to light during plenary consideration of the case and which were not disclosed in the petition for certiorari. The three factors mentioned by the Court, ante, at 119, as tending to prove that the police officer acted in the course of his duties, are determinations made after the incident in question. There are, however, at least three contemporaneous factors, in addition to possession of the gun, which colored the officer’s conduct as official: (1) The officer testified that he had formed an intention that he would arrest at least two of the men when he stood up to intervene in the altercation; (2) he intervened by using a can of mace issued to him by the police department; (3) he was acting pursuant to a police regulation which required his intervention in any disturbance of the peace, whether he was on or off duty.
These factors seem to me important because of the possible negative inference otherwise created that the only objective fact at the time of the incident evidencing state action was the presence of the state-required gun. While, of course, subsequent determinations by state officials, such as mentioned by the Court, are important evidence of state action, they could not transform something into state action that otherwise would be deemed to be private conduct. Thus, it is unclear what the result would have been had the only contemporaneous evidence of state action been the presence of the state-required gun. I wish to make it clear that the Court is not passing on that question today, because it is not presented by the record in this case.