US Supreme Court Plumhoff v. Rickard 12-1117

Decision here.

   A police officer pulled Rickard over for having a broken headlight (there was also a suspicious head-sized indentation in his windshield).  Rickard had a passenger.  Rickard was acting nervous, didn't provide identification, and when he was told to get out of the car, he sped away.

   This began a high-speed chase which lasted five minutes and exceeded 100 mph.  During those five minutes, Rickard and the pursuing officers passed over a dozen other motorists.  Eventually, Rickard lost control of his car after being struck by one of the pursuing police cars.  His car was pinned by bumper-to-bumper contact with a police car, and officers approached on foot.  He kept accelerating and rocking his car to try to break free of the pin, and one of the officers fired three shots into the car.

   Rickard broke free of the pin, and started to drive away again.  Officers fired on the car 12 more times.  Rickard continued to flee, but crashed shortly afterwards.  Both Rickard and his passenger died from a combination of gunshot wounds and injuries from the car crash.  Rickard's family sued the police, arguing that they used excessive force.  After lower courts denied the officers qualified immunity, this case made it all the way up to the Supreme Court.

   There were actually two parts to the excessive force argument: the first was that the police violated the Fourth Amendment by using deadly force to end the pursuit.  The second was that even if the police could reasonably have used deadly force to end the pursuit, firing on the car 15 times was excessive.

   The Supreme Court held than in light of Rickard's extreme reckless driving during the pursuit, he posed a grave risk to public safety.  At the time that the shots were fired, it was apparent that even though he had crashed Rickard was intent on continuing his flight.  A reasonable officer would have concluded that if allowed to flee he would continue to endanger the lives of others.  The police acted reasonably when they used deadly force to terminate the pursuit.  Regarding the firing of 15 shots, the court said "It stands to reason that, if police officers are justified in firing at a suspect in order to end a severe threat to public safety, the officers need not stop shooting until the threat has ended."  In this case, all of the shots were fired within about a ten second time frame.  After the last shots were fired, Rickard still fled a short distance before crashing.  The threat had not ended.

   The Court held that the police did not violate Rickard's Fourth Amendment rights by using deadly force to end the pursuit.  The Court chose not to express an opinion on whether or not his passenger's rights were violated (the lower courts have gone both ways in similar cases), but that's not at issue in this case; Fourth Amendment rights are personal rights which can not be vicariously asserted.  Rickard's estate can't sue on the basis of Rickard's passenger's rights, and even if the force used against her were unreasonable this does nothing at all to enhance Rickard's rights or render the force used against him unreasonable.

   In addition to ruling that the police did not violate Rickard's rights, the court ruled that even if they had the officers would be entitled to qualified immunity because there was no case law clearly establishing that they couldn't use deadly force to end a pursuit.