KEY
POINTS
- The
Supreme Court ruled in two cases that police officers were entitled to
qualified immunity when they used force.
- Qualified
immunity protects officers from lawsuits unless it can be shown that they
violated “clearly established” rights a reasonable person would know
about.
- One
case involved an officer putting his knee on a man’s back during an arrest
while removing a knife from his pocket.
- In the
other case, two officers shot and killed a man after he appeared to
threaten them with a hammer.
- Police
reform advocates have called for an end to qualified immunity, arguing it
insulates officers from accountability for wrongdoing.
The Supreme Court in two cases Monday ruled police officers were entitled to protection from being sued over their use of force against suspects.
The unsigned opinions, posted in the court’s periodic
list of orders, both overturned lower appellate decisions.
One case involved an officer accused of excessive force when
he put his knee on a man’s back during an arrest, while trying to remove a
knife from the man’s pocket. In the other case, two officers were sued by the
estate of a man whom they shot and killed after he appeared to threaten them
with a hammer.
The high court said officers in both cases were entitled to
qualified immunity. That doctrine protects officers from lawsuits unless it can
be shown that they violated “clearly established” rights that a reasonable
person would know about.
Police reform advocates have called for an end to qualified
immunity, arguing it insulates officers from accountability for wrongdoing.
House progressives pushed to include a provision ending
the doctrine as
part of bipartisan police reform negotiations. Those efforts dissolved last month.
The Supreme Court on Monday first ruled on a case in which
police in Union City, California, in 2016 responded to a 911 call alleging
Ramon Cortesluna was going to hurt his girlfriend and her two children, who
were trapped in another room of her home.
As police directed Cortesluna to leave the house and approach
them with his hands up, an officer shouted, “he has a knife in his left
pocket.” Cortesluna lowered his hands and was shot with nonlethal beanbag
rounds in the stomach and hip. He got down on the ground, at which point
officer Daniel Rivas-Villegas “straddled” him and “placed his left knee on the
left side of Cortesluna’s back,” the court wrote in its opinion.
“Rivas-Villegas was in this position for no more than eight
seconds before standing up while continuing to hold Cortesluna’s arms,” at
which point another officer removed the knife and handcuffed Cortesluna, the
court said.
Cortesluna sued, arguing Rivas-Villegas used excessive force
in violation of the Fourth Amendment. A federal district court sided with the
officer, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit reversed that
decision, ruling that “existing precedent put [Rivas-Villegas] on notice that
his conduct constituted excessive force.”
The Supreme Court ruled that “to show a violation of clearly
established law, Cortesluna must identify a case that put Rivas-Villegas on
notice that his specific conduct was unlawful.”
He “has not done so,” the court’s opinion said, and neither
he nor the appeals court “identified any Supreme Court case that addresses
facts like the ones at issue here.”
The other case involved a 2016 police incident in which the
ex-wife of Dominic Rollice told 911 that her former husband was drunk in her
garage and refusing to leave.
Three officers from the Tahlequah, Oklahoma, and Police
Department showed up: Josh Girdner, Chase Reed and Brandon Vick. They
asked to pat Rollice down for weapons, but he refused, and then turned away
from the officers and grabbed a hammer from the garage, according to body cam
footage. Rollice grasped the hammer with both hands and raised it to shoulder
level, and refused to drop it when officers shouted for him to let go of it.
Rollice raised the hammer behind his head and “took a stance
as if he was about to throw the hammer or charge at the officers,” the ruling
said. Girdner and Vick then shot Rollice, killing him.
Rollice’s estate sued alleging the officers violated his
Fourth Amendment right to be free from excessive force. The district court
found the use of force was reasonable and that qualified immunity applied.
But the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals differed, ruling that
the officers’ moves to corner Rollice in the back of the garage led to the use
of deadly force.
The Supreme Court reversed that appellate decision, saying
none of the precedent cited by the lower court “comes close to establishing
that the officers’ conduct was unlawful” in this case.
“We have repeatedly told courts not to define clearly
established law at too high a level of generality,” the high court ruled.
Qualified immunity protects “all but the plainly incompetent
or those who knowingly violate the law,” according to the opinion, which cited
court precedent. It must be clear to “a reasonable officer that his conduct was
unlawful in the situation he confronted,” the court said.
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