Supreme Court rules officer's attempt to end high-speed
chase does not violate 4th Amendment  
By Patrick O. Muench

The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent Fourth Amendment excessive force decision in Scott v. Harris, is notable for several reasons.  The Supreme Court rejected the argument that Tennessee v. Garner created an automatic test in “deadly force” cases and also relied on videotape to reject the facts as alleged by the party opposing the Motion for Summary Judgment as there was no “genuine dispute” as to those facts.  In the end, the Supreme Court examined the facts and held that the officer’s actions could only be found reasonable by a jury and thus there was no Fourth Amendment violation.

 The respondent, Victor Harris, was caught on radar driving 73 mph in a 55 mph zone.  Georgia police attempted to pull Harris over but he sped away.  A chase was initiated and at one point Harris was boxed in by police officers.  He was able to escape after colliding with petitioner Timothy Scott’s police car. The chase continued down a two lane highway. Ten miles later, Officer Scott, after receiving permission to do so, used his front bumper to attempt to cause Harris’ vehicle to spin to a stop. Instead, Harris lost control of his vehicle and crashed, causing injuries which left him a quadriplegic. 

Harris filed suit against Scott, among others, under 42 USC § 1983.   Scott filed a Motion for Summary Judgment based on qualified immunity which the District Court denied. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed on interlocutory appeal. The Court of Appeals took Harris’ facts as alleged and held that the actions could be considered, by a reasonable jury, “deadly force” and could violate the Fourth Amendment.

The U.S. Supreme Court reversed the lower courts and granted summary judgment for the petitioner.  The Supreme Court, confronted with the same set of facts, concluded that a reasonable jury could only find that the officer’s actions were reasonable and thus not violative of the Fourth Amendment.  

The Supreme Court decision of Saucier v. Katz, established that the threshold question in qualified immunity cases is whether the officer’s conduct violated a constitutional right.  As this was in the Summary Judgment stage, courts generally (as the Eleventh Circuit did) view the facts in the light most favorable to the party asserting the injury.  However, the Supreme Court stated that is only done when there is a “genuine dispute” as to the facts.  In this case, there was videotape taken from the pursuing officers’ cars that established the facts and left no “genuine dispute.” 

The facts as established by the videotape were then used by the Court to say that Officer Scott’s actions were “objectively reasonable” and thus did not violate Harris’ Fourth Amendment rights.  Therefore, since the Court found no violation of a constitutional right, they never reached the qualified immunity question. 

The Fourth Amendment analysis is notable in that it rejects the notion that once “deadly force” is used, the factors enumerated in Garner must be examined.  Instead, the Court limited Garner to its factual situation and stated that Garner did not establish a “magical on/off switch that triggers preconditions whenever an officer’s actions constitute ‘deadly force’.” Rather, courts dealing with these cases must wade through the “fact bound morass of reasonableness.”  The Court then proceeded to wade through the videotape evidence and balanced the governmental interest in public safety against the risk of bodily harm to Harris.  The Court stated that it was clear from the videotape that there was an “actual and imminent threat” to pedestrians, other motorists and the officers and also that there was a “high likelihood of serious injury or death” to Harris.  With these probabilities established, the Court considered the number of lives at risk and their level of culpability.  Since Harris put himself in the situation while innocent parties were exactly that, the Court held that it was reasonable for the officer to act as he did. 

It is unclear whether the Court in this decision lay down a per se rule.  The language of the opinion would seem to answer in the affirmative as it states, “A police officer’s attempt to terminate a dangerous high-speed car chase that threatens the lives of innocent bystanders does not violate the Fourth Amendment, even when it places the fleeing motorist at risk of serious injury or death.”  However, the court reached their decision in this case by sloshing through the “fact bound morass” and rejecting Harris’ “attempt to craft an easy-to-apply legal test in the Fourth Amendment context.”  The concurrences by Justices Ginsburg and Breyer, respectively, state that they do not read the decision to put forth a per se rule and they disagree with the Court to the extent that is what the court has done.

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County deputy sheriff stalks city police officer
By Dan Murray

Federal constitutional and State law rights are implicated when a Boone County, Illinois Deputy Sheriff allegedly stalked a City of Belvidere, Illinois, Police Officer and the Officer’s girlfriend, so as to harass, intimidate and interfere with the couple’s freedom of association.  There was pre-existing animosity between the Deputy Sheriff and the Police Officer, when the Deputy Sheriff began to:  follow the couple, individually and together, when they were lawfully driving, even abandoning other legitimate calls-in-progress in order to shadow the couple; surveil the girlfriend from his parked squad car at her place of employment, and sit in his squad car in front of business establishments where the couple were patrons, all with the alleged specific intent to harm the couple in their relationship with each other.  The couple alleged that despite their lodging complaints, the Boone County Sheriff’s Department took no action to curtail the Deputy Sheriff’s conduct.     

Taking the couple’s allegations as true for determination whether they stated a viable claim, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals (Chicago) held there was no unreasonable search in violation of the Fourth Amendment because the Deputy Sheriff’s observations of the couple were in public, and not within any zone of privacy enjoyed by the Police Officer and his girlfriend.  Similarly, because the Deputy Sheriff’s conduct did not restrict the couple’s movement, there was no seizure under the Fourth Amendment.            

The court then examined the couple’s “fundamental right to associate intimately with one another,” a liberty interest that is protected by the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.  In distinguishing Federal constitutional torts from “ordinary” State law torts, the court observed that “only the most egregious conduct that shocks the conscience” will give rise to a redressable constitutional tort.  Though describing the Deputy Sheriff’s stalking conduct as outside the scope of his duties, and “disreputable and shameful,” two of the three appeals judges concluded the couple’s allegations were not sufficiently egregious to shock the conscience.  The third appeals judge disagreed, with the observation that the Deputy Sheriff’s misuse of his office was directed against the couple’s exercise of their fundamental liberty interest in intimate association, thereby constituting “an arbitrary abuse of power that shocks the conscience.”  Although all three judges agreed the couple could pursue in State court their claim against the Deputy Sheriff for intentional infliction of emotional distress, the dissenting judge in conclusion remarked:  

"Today’s decision … will have a very practical and harmful effect on municipal governance throughout this circuit.  The panel majority’s failure to recognize the situation here as a willful abuse of governmental power and its failure to characterize the conduct as conscience shocking will have a direct and immediate effect on efforts to maintain discipline and professionalism in the countless number of small municipal police forces that dot our landscape.  This is no easy task for those who have the responsibility of county and municipal leadership today.  The ravages of undue political influence and the lack of financial resources for both recruitment and training make the burden of those in leadership positions a heavy one indeed.  Today, the highest federal court in this region of the United States sends a surely unintended, but nevertheless unwelcome, message that minimizes the significance of a raw use of municipal police power.  The task of the dedicated officers who command those departments just became more difficult."

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