U.S.
Supreme Court makes it harder to sue police for barging into homes
Supreme
Court sets aside $4-million verdict in police shooting in Los Angeles County.
The Supreme Court on
Tuesday made it harder to sue police for barging into a home and provoking a
shooting, setting aside a $4-million verdict against two Los Angeles County
deputies.
The money was awarded to a homeless couple who were startled and
then shot when the two sheriff’s deputies entered the shack where they were
sleeping.
The unanimous ruling rejected the so-called provocation rule
that some lower courts have used. Under that rule, police can be sued for
violating a victim’s constitutional rights against unreasonable searches if
they provoked a confrontation that resulted in violence.
“The basic problem with the provocation rule,” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.,
wrote in the 8-0 decision, is that it “provides a novel and unsupported path to
liability in cases in which the use of force was reasonable.”
A federal judge decided the two deputies responded reasonably
when they saw Angel Mendez, the sleeping man, reach for a weapon, which turned
out to be a BB gun.
The deputies were liable for the injuries they caused, the judge
ruled, because they had provoked the incident by going on to private property
and barging into the shack without a search warrant and without announcing
their presence.
In Tuesday’s opinion in County of Los Angeles vs. Mendez, the
justices said the judge and the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals were wrong to
rely on the provocation rule. But they sent the case back to the 9th Circuit to
reconsider whether the verdict can be upheld on the grounds the deputies
violated the 4th Amendment when they searched without a warrant.
The Assn. for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs welcomed the court’s
rejection of the provocation rule.
“This invented rule put the lives of deputies into danger by
causing them to hesitate in using reasonable force to defend themselves for
fear of later civil liability,” the group said in a statement.
The American Civil Liberties Union had urged the court to uphold
the verdict. But David Cole, the ACLU’s national legal director, said the
court’s opinion makes clear officers can be held liable in such cases.
“In my view, the decision does not give police a blank check to
provoke violence. It holds that where the police act unconstitutionally, they
are responsible for the reasonable consequences of their conduct,” Cole said.
The case began in 2010 when deputies were searching for a parole
violator who was believed to be armed and dangerous. Based on a tip, a dozen
deputies went to a house in Lancaster. They did not have a search warrant.
Several deputies banged on the front door and pressed to enter, and two others
went around to the back where they saw three metal storage sheds and a wooden
shack.
When one of them opened the door of the shack and pulled back a
blue blanket, he startled a man and a woman who were napping. When the man
reached for a BB gun, one deputy yelled “Gun!” and the two officers fired 15
shots.
Mendez was hit several times and lost his leg. His wife,
Jennifer Garcia Mendez, who was pregnant, was hit in the back. The deputies did
not find the fugitive they were looking for.
Both shooting victims survived and sued Los Angeles County for
their injuries.
After a trial, U.S. District Judge Michael Fitzgerald handed
down the $4-million verdict.
The 9th Circuit Court upheld the decision and agreed the
officers had recklessly and intentionally provoked the confrontation.
Last year, lawyers for Los Angeles County appealed and argued
that the 9th Circuit was the only appeals court to use the provocation rule as
a separate basis for upholding excessive force claims against the police.
The eight justices heard arguments in the case in late March
while Justice Neil M. Gorsuch’s confirmation was pending in the Senate, and
they sounded evenly split. Tuesday’s opinion looks to be a compromise of sorts
that rejects one approach but leaves open the prospect that victims of police
shootings may recover damages if the officers undertook an unreasonable search.
Twitter: DavidGSavage
UPDATES:
1:25 p.m.: This article was updated with
additional facts about the case and reaction.
This article was originally published at 10:35 a.m.
Copyright © 2017, Los Angeles Times
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