Supreme Court rules for officer in fatal 2011 shooting
SANTA FE — The U.S. Supreme Court has sided with a New Mexico State Police officer facing a wrongful death lawsuit over the fatal shooting of a gunwielding man at his house east of Santa Fe about five years ago.
At least one legal expert said the decision could have wideranging effects, making it more difficult to sue police officers.
The shooting occurred when officers surrounded the home of two brothers, one of whom was involved in an earlier road rage incident on Interstate 25. The officer who fired the fatal shot showed up later than the other two officers.
In a unanimous but unsigned decision released Monday, the nation’s high court said officer Ray White “did not violate clearly established law” when he shot and killed Samuel Pauly, 34, without calling out a warning first.
The court’s ruling overturns decisions by U.S. District Judge Kenneth J. Gonzales of Albuquerque and the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver.
Gonzales had rejected defense
motions to dismiss the Pauly family’s wrongful death suit against White and two other officers, and the Denver appeals court affirmed Gonzales’ decision.
The officers appealed to the Supreme Court, which said the appeals court “failed to identify a case where an officer acting under similar circumstances as Officer White was held to have violated the Fourth Amendment,” which protects individuals from the use of excessive force by police.
Noah Feldman, a Bloomberg View columnist and professor of constitutional and international law at Harvard University, wrote that the decision was significant and will make it more difficult to sue police officers “because almost all confrontations have unique features that could be used to block lawsuits.”
“In essence, the court is signaling that it wants fewer suits against officers in the lower courts, and is chiding the appellate courts for allowing such suits,” Feldman said in a column he wrote after the decision.
But the Supreme Court’s ruling does not on its own end the suit over the Pauly shooting. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in a concurring opinion, clarified that all three officers at the scene could still face liability on grounds not ruled out by Monday’s high court decision.
Attorneys on both sides of the case did not return calls seeking comment Monday.
The shooting occurred about 11 p.m. Oct. 4, 2011. White arrived at the rural Glorieta scene a couple of minutes after two other State Police officers, Kevin Truesdale and Michael Mariscal.
The other officers shouted to Pauly and his brother, Daniel, who were both inside, that they had the house surrounded after the brothers had called out, “Who are you?” and “What do you want?”
Truesdale has said he also yelled “State Police, open the door,” but Daniel Pauly has maintained that the brothers had no way of knowing who was outside their door and that they thought the visitors might be people connected to the earlier road rage incident on I-25 involving Daniel.
Daniel Pauly said he fired two warning shots out the back of the house and yelled, “We have guns,” which White heard as he approached the house.
The Santa Fe District Attorney’s Office has said evidence shows that Samuel Pauly also fired a shot toward officers. He was killed by a gunshot fired by officer White, who had taken cover behind a stone wall.
The Supreme Court found: “Clearly established federal law does not prohibit an ongoing police action in circumstances like this from assuming that proper procedures, such as officer identification, have already been followed. No settled Fourth Amendment principle requires that officer to second-guess the earlier steps already taken by his or her fellow officers in instances like the one confronted here.”
At issue in the lawsuit has been whether the officers have “qualified immunity,” an established legal principle that protects officers from liability for civil damages in the performance of their duties as long as their conduct does not violate “clearly established” statutory or constitutional rights.
The Supreme Court said nothing White did violated “clearly established” law, overturning the appeals court, and remanded the case “for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.” The high court took no position on whether the other two officers — Truesdale and Mariscal — are entitled to qualified immunity.
Ginsburg’s concurring opinion says Monday’s decision also leaves open the question of whether the suit can continue against White “based on fact disputes over when Officer White arrived at the scene, what he may have witnessed, and whether he had adequate time to identify himself and order Samuel Pauly to drop his weapon before Officer White shot Pauly.”
The events that led to the shooting started when two young women driving on I-25 called 911 to report that the driver of a truck — who turned out to be Daniel Pauly — was driving recklessly and in a harassing manner. The women gave police a license plate number that led officers to the Pauly brothers’ house in Glorieta. Daniel Pauly has maintained that it was the women who were driving dangerously.
The Supreme Court ruling notes that officers agreed after responding to the 911 call that there was no probable cause to arrest Pauly but decided to go to his house to get his side of the story, to “make sure nothing else happened” and to find out whether he was drunk.