Justices Take Up Police Use of Lethal Force
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
WASHINGTON, Feb. 26 — There was no dispute in the Supreme Court on Monday about the disastrous consequences of a high-speed police chase over the back roads of a rural Georgia county six years ago. A deputy sheriff caught up with the car that he and other officers were pursuing and, still traveling at high speed, rammed it with his own car, causing an accident that left Victor Harris, the 19-year-old driver, a quadriplegic. Mr. Harris’s original offense that set off the chase: driving 73 miles an hour in a 55-mile-an-hour zone. The Coweta County police delivered speeding citations to his hospital room.
The question for the court was whether the forcible termination of the chase had been reasonable under the circumstances, or whether a jury should at least be permitted to consider Mr. Harris’s claim that Deputy Sheriff Timothy Scott violated his constitutional rights by unreasonable application of deadly force. At issue were the standards to apply to such a determination. The lawyers arguing for the deputy, both Philip W. Savrin of Atlanta and Gregory G. Garre, a deputy solicitor general in the Justice Department, argued that those precedents were not relevant, given the particular danger that Mr. Harris’s driving, at speeds of up to 90 miles an hour on dark and winding country roads, had posed to other drivers.The court’s leading precedent, Tennessee v. Garner, from 1985, held that the police had acted unreasonably in shooting an unarmed suspect in the back as he fled from a house he was suspected of burglarizing.
But this case, Scott v. Harris, No. 05-1631, is “fundamentally different from Garner,” Mr. Garre said. When the deputy decided to use force, Mr. Garre continued, he “reasonably determined” that Mr. Harris “posed a grave threat to other motorists, the police and any bystanders who might come in his way.”Most justices appeared to agree rather readily, describing their reactions to watching a videotape of the pursuit, made by an automatic camera mounted on the deputy’s dashboard, which is part of the record of the case. “He created the scariest chase I ever saw since ‘The French Connection,’ ” Justice Antonin Scalia observed. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. told Craig T. Jones, Mr. Harris’s lawyer, that his client “created a tremendous risk” to other drivers.
Only Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg raised the question of whether it would have been more reasonable for the police simply to have abandoned the chase. “If the police weren’t after him, there is no indication that he would have been speeding,” Justice Ginsburg said.Justice Stevens raised the issue repeatedly. When Mr. Garre gave a hair-raising description of Mr. Harris’s behavior in trying to elude the police, Justice Stevens observed, “Before being chased he hadn’t done any of this.”
And when Deputy Scott’s lawyer, Mr. Savrin, said he had decided to intercept Mr. Harris after concluding that there was “a high likelihood, in fact a probability,” that harm would otherwise come to others on the road, Justice Stevens asked, “Would that have been likely if the officer had discontinued the chase?”Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. intervened several times to depict the deputy’s behavior as reasonable. “Is it reasonable to suppose that there might be something more going on if the guy is trying this hard to get away from a speeding ticket?” the chief justice asked at one point. Later he suggested that the car might have been stolen or that the deputy could have assumed Mr. Harris was being pursued “for mass murder or terrorism.”
With the court seemingly set against him, it was not easy for Mr. Harris’s lawyer, Mr. Jones, to get much traction during his 30 minutes at the lectern. His client was “an unsafe driver,” he said, but was not an aggressor. Mr. Harris even used his turn signal when he passed other cars, Mr. Jones noted. That drew a sarcastic response from Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. “He used the turning signal!” Justice Kennedy said, adding, “That’s like the strangler who observes the ‘no smoking’ sign.”
For deadly force to be justified under the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable seizure, Mr. Jones persisted, “something more than just unsafe flight” is required. The rule the Supreme Court set 22 years ago in the Garner case to protect fleeing suspects should apply in this setting as well, he said, adding: “The rule simply says you don’t kill him just because he is driving unsafely. And it simply says that if the choice is between killing him and letting him go, you have to let him go if the Garner factors aren’t present. And we find nothing in the law and no reason to create a new exception in the law that says that Garner doesn’t apply if you’re fleeing by vehicle.”
Your quiz is based on an understanding of this article and these questions:
1. What crime did Victor Harris initially commit?
2. What technique did the police use to stop Mr. Harris and what was the result?
3. What is the legal basis for Mr. Harris’ claim against the sheriff’s department?
4. What argument are the lawyers for the deputies making to show that the use of deadly force was acceptable?
5. The Garner case is the precedent for the police use of deadly force. What were the circumstances and outcome of the Garner case?
6. How do lawyers for the deputies see this case as different from Garner?
7. What argument did justices Stevens and Ginsburg make about the necessity of the chase?
8. How did Chief Justice Roberts counter the argument of Justices Stevens and Ginsburg?
9. How did Victor Harris’ lawyer characterize his client?
10. What choice should the police have made according to Victor Harris’ lawyer?
11. Write a two paragraph decision about this case as if you were a Supreme Court Justice. You must use the legal precedent (Garner) in you explanation and provide a detailed explanation of your findings.
Title your essay either:
The use of deadly force was REASONABLE
Or The use of deadly force was UNREASONABLE