Supreme Court Says Context of Police Shooting Determines Whether It’s Justified

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court appears to have made it easier for police officers to be sued for excessive use of force with a ruling Thursday that requires courts to consider the “totality of circumstances.”

The ruling resulted from the 2016 fatal shooting of a Houston, Texas, man who tried to flee during a police traffic stop.

The unanimous Supreme Court decision said a lower court erred by considering only the immediate circumstances, namely that 24-year-old Ashtian Barnes was fleeing when traffic Officer Roberto Felix Jr. shot him. The trial court ruled that Felix committed no wrongdoing.

However, it failed to consider whether Barnes represented a safety threat, which might not have been evidenced under the totality of circumstances, the Supreme Court ruled.

The majority opinion said that “by limiting their view to the two seconds before the shooting, the lower courts could not take into account anything preceding that final moment.”

The decision is based largely on Fourth Amendment protections that require evidence of probable cause that a crime was committed before police can lawfully intervene, such as with an arrest or use of force.

The ruling is another refinement of the qualified immunity from lawsuits for police granted under federal and most state laws.

Qualified immunity is a legal principle that grants police and other government officials making good faith efforts to perform their job duties immunity from lawsuits in most cases. 

The exception is when a plaintiff shows the official violated what the Supreme Court has previously called “clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.”

The Supreme Court’s decision Thursday clears up a confusing mix of standards among lower federal courts on when police use of force is excessive.

Eight circuit courts of appeal have been using the totality of the circumstances approach. Four others consider the “moment of threat” to decide whether police acted appropriately.

“While the situation at the precise time of the shooting will often matter most, earlier facts and circumstances may bear on how a reasonable officer would have understood and responded to later ones,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote.

The ruling sends the case back to the lower courts where Barnes’ mother will get another opportunity to argue that the police officer who shot her son and his department should be liable.

Felix had pulled Barnes over on April 28, 2016, after a license plate check showed unpaid tolls associated with his girlfriend’s rental car that Barnes was driving. Barnes was unarmed.

Felix ordered Barnes to get out of the car. Instead, Barnes started slowly driving away.

Felix jumped onto the doorsill of the moving car and two seconds later shot Barnes twice. Barnes was able to stop the car despite being critically injured.

Felix said he fired in self-defense because Barnes’ erratic driving put his life at risk. The shooting was captured on the officer’s dashboard camera. 

Janice Barnes, the mother of Ashtian Barnes, sued Felix and Harris County in Texas state court. She cited Title 42, Section 1983, of the U.S. Code, which grants individuals a right to sue state government employees and others acting “under color of state law” for civil rights violations. 

The case was moved to federal court, where both the trial court and the appellate court said Felix’s actions should be judged by whether the traffic officer was in danger of serious injury or death at the moment he fired. They both ruled in his favor.

On appeal to the Supreme Court, attorneys for Barnes argued the officer had no justifiable reason to kill an unarmed man who created no imminent threat. They said he created any danger for himself by leaping onto the car when he could have pursued Barnes in his own vehicle or called for back-up.

An attorney for Felix argued that anytime an officer is in danger during a confrontation, use of deadly force is presumptively reasonable.

“That conclusion should end this case,” said attorney Charles L. McCloud.

The Supreme Court said instead that the context of the confrontation should be considered.

“Prior events may show, for example, why a reasonable officer would have perceived otherwise ambiguous conduct of a suspect as threatening,” Kagan wrote. “Or instead they may show why such an officer would have perceived the same conduct as innocuous.”

The case is Janice Hughes Barnes, Representative of the Estate of Ashtian Barnes, v. Roberto Felix Jr. et al. in the U.S. Supreme Court.

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