Justices side with police in excessive force cases
Court rulings back qualified immunity
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court sided Monday with police in two cases in which plaintiffs claimed officers used excessive force, overturning separate lower court rulings that had allowed the officers to be sued for civil rights violations.
In two unsigned opinions, the court stressed police are entitled to be shielded from liability unless it is “clear to a reasonable officer” that their actions are unlawful. In both cases the court ruled that the officers were entitled to qualified immunity, the legal doctrine that protects police from liability for civil rights violations in many circumstances.
In one case, the Supreme Court overturned a lower court ruling that found an officer in California who placed his knee on a prone suspect could be sued. In another, it overturned a lower court ruling that two police officers in Oklahoma could be sued because their actions before a fatal shooting escalated the potential for violence.
At a time when the nation is still grappling with fatal police interactions and bipartisan talks in Congress over increasing accountability have fizzled, the Supreme Court has mostly balked at lawsuits questioning the legal immunity extended officers.
Critics say qualified immunity lets police off the hook in virtually every case in which their actions are not specifically prohibited. Police organizations have long countered that officers need immunity in cases when they must defend themselves and split-second decisions can lead to unforeseen tragedy.
There were no dissents from any justice in either case.
In one lawsuit, two officers in Oklahoma were part of a group of police that responded to a 911 call from the ex-wife of Dominic Rollice. The 49-year-old was in the garage, his former wife told police, and was intoxicated. Police walked into the garage and confronted Rollice.
Rollice continued to talk with the officers “relatively calmly,” according to a lower federal court’s account, but also appeared to pull the hammer behind his head at one point. In response, two of the officers fired their weapons multiple times. Rollice died of his wounds.
In the other suit, police were sent to a home in Union City, California, near San Francisco five years ago after a 911 call in which a 12-year-old girl reported that her mother’s boyfriend had a chainsaw and was going to attack her and her family. When police arrived, they spotted a knife in Ramon Cortesluna’s pocket and shot him with beanbag rounds when he lowered his hands in apparent confusion at the orders police were shouting at him.
A divided U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit reversed a lower court’s judgment for the officer, ruling that controlling precedent at the time put police on notice that kneeling on the back of a prone, nonresisting suspect was considered excessive force. Attorneys for the police told the Supreme Court in a brief that the kneeling move used on Cortesluna is “standard field procedure.”