WASHINGTON — On Wednesday, the justices of the Supreme Court seemed ready to grant a claim of excessive force against a police officer for shooting a Black man after a routine traffic stop in Houston.
In April 2016, Ashtian Barnes, 24, was killed as he was talking to an officer when the car he was driving began to move forward.
When the automobile proceeded, Harris County Precinct 5 Constable’s Office traffic enforcement officer Roberto Felix Jr. leaped on the car door sill and shot Barnes twice. Barnes passed away right there.
The question at hand is whether the courts improperly concentrated on Felix’s decision to shoot rather than the seconds before it in order to determine whether he used excessive force.
The decision will aid in deciding whether Janice Hughes, Barnes’ mother, may proceed with her civil rights complaint. She alleges that Felix violated the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution by using excessive force. Although it is not directly at issue before the Supreme Court, she also filed a second lawsuit against the police department.
Based on Supreme Court precedent that states the “totality of the circumstances” must be considered, justices from all ideological stripes seemed to concur that the lower courts’ strategy was incorrect.
According to the justices, this means that more than simply the two seconds before Felix decided to use force should be taken into account.
However, it is likely to be a limited decision that only returns the matter to lower courts for additional consideration, leaving it up to those courts to decide whether excessive force was employed.
“So it seems as though we should kick it back [to lower courts] and let you guys fight it out as to the relevance of anything that happened beyond the prior two seconds,” Justice Elena Kagan said.
If police officers could be sued for their involvement in exacerbating a crisis, some justices also seemed worried about rendering a decision that would make it harder for them to perform their duties.
In particular, Justice Brett Kavanaugh seems concerned about any court decision that might suggest it would be irrational for an officer to get into a car when the driver is attempting to flee.
“What should an officer do if someone pulls away during a traffic stop? “Just them go?” he inquired. He pointed out that the motorist may be on the verge of committing violent or other crimes in certain circumstances.
Additionally, Justice Neil Gorsuch seemed to be against the court delving into whether the officer’s actions resulted in the use of force, but ostensibly for the opposite reason—that is, he did not want the court to render a ruling that was overly pro-police.
“Why would we put a thumb on the scale that way and say that it’s almost impossible to make out a Fourth Amendment claim in those circumstances given the varied nature of encounters between police officers and citizens across the country?” he said.
Hughes asserted in an interview with NBC News that she was pursuing the lawsuit in order to make people aware that “my son was a victim.”
“Nobody’s policing the police,” she continued, nearly five years after another Black man, George Floyd, was killed by a police officer.
Both a district court judge and a judge on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans stated that the precedent set by some courts that restricts consideration of the seconds preceding the use of force was incorrect and ought to be reversed, despite lower courts’ decisions against Hughes.
If the Supreme Court decides in Hughes’ favor, that method of analysis, known as the “moment of the threat doctrine,” would be declared invalid nationally. One obstacle to plaintiffs filing lawsuits against police personnel would be eliminated by such a decision.
Felix would be able to use the qualified immunity defense, which shields police officers if it was not “clearly established” at the time of the incident that their actions were illegal, if courts decide to allow Hughes’ case to proceed.