How the Supreme Court Lets Cops Get Away With Murder
Last edited Sat May 30, 2020, 10:45 AM - Edit history (1)
How the Supreme Court Lets Cops Get Away With Murder
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/29/opinion/Minneapolis-police-George-Floyd.html
The courts protected police abuses for years before George Floyd’s death. It’s time to rethink “qualified immunity.”
By The Editorial Board
The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.
May 29, 2020
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Police officers don’t face justice more often for a variety of reasons — from powerful police unions to the blue wall of silence to cowardly prosecutors to reluctant juries. But it is the Supreme Court that has enabled a culture of violence and abuse by eviscerating a vital civil rights law to provide police officers what, in practice, is nearly limitless immunity from prosecution for actions taken while on the job. The badge has become a get-out-of-jail-free card in far too many instances.
In 1967, the same year the police chief of Miami coined the phrase “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” to threaten civil rights demonstrators, the Supreme Court first articulated a notion of “qualified immunity.” In the case of police violence against a group of civil rights demonstrators in Mississippi, the court decided that police officers should not face legal liability for enforcing the law “in good faith and with probable cause.”
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In the five decades since the doctrine’s invention, qualified immunity has expanded in practice to excuse all manner of police misconduct, from assault to homicide. As the legal bar for victims to challenge police misconduct has been raised higher and higher by the Supreme Court, the lower courts have followed. A major investigation by Reuters earlier this year found that “since 2005, the courts have shown an increasing tendency to grant immunity in excessive force cases — rulings that the district courts below them must follow. The trend has accelerated in recent years.” What was intended to prevent frivolous lawsuits against agents of the government, the investigation concluded, “has become a highly effective shield in thousands of lawsuits seeking to hold cops accountable when they are accused of using excessive force.”
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As the militarization of police tactics and technology has accelerated in the past two decades, pleas from liberals and conservatives to narrow the doctrine of qualified immunity, and to make it easier to hold police and other officials accountable for obvious civil rights violations, have grown to a crescendo. The Supreme Court is considering more than a dozen cases to hear next term that could do just that. One case involves a police officer in Georgia who, while pursuing a suspect, held a group of young children at gunpoint, fired two bullets at the family dog, missed and hit a 10-year-old boy in the arm. Another involves officers who used tear gas grenades to enter a home when they’d been given a key to the front door.
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Fearing For His Life
https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/13/18253848/eric-garner-footage-ramsey-orta-police-brutality-killing-safety
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In New York state, a grand jury returns a true bill of indictment if a bare majority — 12 of the 23 sitting jurors — believes there’s enough evidence to proceed to a criminal trial. Daniel Pantaleo’s grand jury sat for nine weeks. Ramsey Orta was the first of 50 witnesses to testify. His video, along with the medical examiner’s report, provided clear evidence that Pantaleo had used an illegal chokehold on Garner. A “chokehold” is defined in the NYPD patrol guide as “any pressure to the throat or windpipe,” which hinders breathing. Orta’s video showed that Pantaleo had continued to apply pressure to Garner’s windpipe after Garner was on the ground, subdued, and had repeatedly said that he couldn’t breathe. Still, the Staten Island grand jury declined to indict Pantaleo.
The ruling further reinforced the reality of the tremendous authority police officers have to determine a necessary use of force. Barely a week prior, a St. Louis County grand jury declined to indict Darren Wilson, the officer who shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black man, in Ferguson, Missouri. A year later, a grand jury would come to the same decision in regard to Timothy Loehmann, the officer who — after only two seconds on the scene — shot and killed an unarmed black child, Tamir Rice. No charges were brought against the officers involved in Alton Sterling’s death in Baton Rouge. Officer Jeronimo Yanez was charged with second-degree manslaughter for the death of Philando Castile, only to be acquitted. The trials for the Baltimore police officers involved in the death of Freddie Gray ended in a mistrial and more acquittals.
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In 2015, Officer Ray Tensing shot and killed Samuel DuBose, an unarmed black man, during a traffic stop. Tensing claimed that he “feared for his life” after DuBose started his car and began to drive away with Tensing’s arm caught through the driver’s window. His bodycam footage directly contradicted this account. He was indicted, but the charges were dismissed. In 2017, Betty Jo Shelby was acquitted in the shooting death of an unarmed black man, Terence Crutcher, despite police video showing Crutcher with his hands up in compliance. When asked why she fired her weapon, Shelby said, “I feared for my life.”
"For police, this near-total authority is protected by our judicial system"
In 2016, jurors were shown bodycam footage that clearly depicted Milwaukee resident Sylville K. Smith running from police. Cornered, Smith gave up the chase, threw his gun over a fence, and put his hands up in surrender. Then police officer Dominique Heaggan-Brown shot Smith, killing him. The defense attorney told the jury Heaggan-Brown acted out of fear for his life. The jury found the officer not guilty.
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And so it becomes easy — for jurors and the public alike — to trust authority and leave the dead confined to the margins of our imagination. The victims are gone. They can’t testify. They can’t tell us of their fear for their lives.
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