Too-Deadly Force

Slowly, sometimes too slowly, civilization moves upward from the state of nature to the state of enlightenment, decency and common sense. The latest example was the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling last week that policemen may not use deadly force to stop a fleeing suspect who “poses no immediate threat to the officer and no threat to others.”

The wonder is that in the ninth decade of the 20th Century 21 states, not including California, still had laws permitting police to take whatever steps were necessary to apprehend escaping suspects. To be sure, many police departments in those states already had more restrictive rules about the use of deadly force. But the legislatures still subscribed to the primacy of the state to arrest people by any means, even though they posed no immediate threat. Though this notion is as old as English common law, the justices ruled by a 6-3 vote that it is the law no longer. “The use of deadly force to prevent the escape of all felony suspects, whatever the circumstances, is constitutionally unreasonable,” Justice Byron R. White wrote for the majority. “It is not better that all felony suspects die than that they escape. A police officer may not seize an unarmed, non-dangerous suspect by shooting him dead.”

The circumstances of the case before the court were particularly egregious. In 1974 a Memphis policeman shot and killed an unarmed 15-year-old boy who was fleeing a burglary scene. The boy’s father brought suit, challenging the Tennessee law that allowed the police to take “all the necessary means” to stop a fleeing felony suspect. The U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the law, and the Supreme Court last week upheld the decision. The inherent logic, rationality and reasonableness of the court’s ruling can only make one wonder why it was so long in coming.

The only negative aspect of the court’s decision is that it was not unanimous. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote a dissenting opinion, which was joined by Chief Justice Warren E. Burger and Associate Justice William H. Rehnquist, in which she argued that society’s compelling interest in preventing crime extends to killing suspected criminals, even if they are unarmed 15-year-old boys who have just stolen $10 and a purse. Fortunately, that extreme view was outnumbered two-to-one.