Supreme Court bars lawsuit over fatal border shooting
Conservatives prevail in death sentence case
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court moved Tuesday to close the courthouse door on the parents of a Mexican teenager who was shot dead over the border by an American agent.
In the 5-4 ruling, the court’s five conservative justices held that the parents could not use American courts to sue Jesus Mesa Jr., the Border Patrol agent who killed their unarmed 15-year-old son in 2010. Mesa was on U.S. soil in Texas when he fired the fatal shot.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the court that the case is tragic, but that strong border security and international relations issues led to the ruling against the parents of Sergio Adrian Hernandez Guereca.
“Since regulating the conduct of agents at the border unquestionably has national security implications, the risk of undermining border security provides reasons to hesitate” about allowing the parents to sue in American courts, Alito wrote.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for her liberal colleagues, disagreed, saying the parents’ lawsuit does not endanger border security or U.S. foreign policy.
Tuesday’s outcome also is certain to doom a lawsuit filed by the parents of a teenager killed in Nogales, Mexico, from gunshots fired across the border by a U.S. agent who was standing in Arizona. That case has been on hold.
The case tested a half-century-old Supreme Court decision that allows people to sue federal officials for constitutional violations. Over the years, the courts have made it harder to bring claims, known as Bivens actions after the name of the high court case.
Ginsburg wrote that “it is all too apparent that to redress injuries like the one suffered here, it is Bivens or nothing. I resist the conclusion that ‘nothing’ is the answer required in this case.”
Justice Clarence Thomas, who was part of the court majority, said he would get rid of Bivens lawsuits altogether. Justice Neil Gorsuch joined Thomas’ separate opinion.
Alito noted that the Justice Department and the parents disagreed about the sequence of events that led to Sergio’s death. But there is no question that Mesa was standing on the U.S. side of the border when he fired into Mexico and killed him with a gunshot wound to the face.
The Border Patrol drastically changed its use-of-force policies in the years after the shooting, following several complaints of excessive force.
There were 15 instances where officers and agents used firearms during the budget year 2018, down from a high of 55 reported during the 2012 budget year.
Death sentence upheld
A sharply divided court also upheld the death sentence for an Arizona inmate who was convicted of killing two people in home burglaries nearly 30 years ago.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, writing for the court’s conservative justices, rejected the arguments of inmate James Erin McKinney that he deserved a new sentencing hearing so that a jury can decide whether he should face death or life in prison. He was first sentenced to death by a judge.
He also argued that courts have not fully considered the horrific physical abuse he suffered as a child.
The court’s four liberal justices dissented. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in dissent that she “would hold McKinney’s death sentences unconstitutional.”
The Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that juries, not judges, must impose death sentences. The court has also ruled that mitigating factors, including childhood deprivations, must be factored into sentencing decisions.
The justices had to decide whether McKinney should be able to take advantage of the ruling that requires juries to impose death sentences, even though the court ruled it does not typically apply to older cases. They also had to determine whether the issue of McKinney’s past must be handled in a trial court or could be dealt with by the Arizona Supreme Court, which upheld his sentence in 2018 after it said it had given some weight to his childhood deprivations.
Custody dispute
The Supreme Court is resolving an international child custody dispute in favor of the girl’s Italian father over her American mother.
The mother, Michelle Monasky, fled with her daughter from Italy to Ohio when the girl was 2 months old. Monasky said her husband had become abusive, so she left with her daughter and moved in with her parents in the United States. The Supreme Court agreed unanimously Tuesday that lower courts were correct in ordering that the girl, now 5, be returned to Italy.
The child’s father, Domenico Taglieri, had petitioned courts in the United States for the girl’s return and won. The child, who is referred to as A.M.T. in court documents, was actually returned to Italy when she was nearly 2 years old and put in her father’s care. An appeal of the case continued in the United States, however, and custody proceedings are still ongoing in Italy.
An international treaty says that a child wrongfully removed from her country of “habitual residence” should usually be returned to that country. Monasky had argued to the Supreme Court that Italy was not the infant’s habitual residence because she and Taglieri had not agreed to raise the girl there.
But Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in an opinion that no agreement was necessary for Italy to be the girl’s habitual residence. And the Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that found that the girl was born into “a marital home in Italy” and her parents had “no definitive plan to return to the United States.” The couple initially lived together in Milan before Taglieri moved to Lugo for a job.