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from the making-it-up-as-they-go-along dept.
The World Socialist Web Site reports
On January 9, the US Supreme Court issued a unanimous summary ruling reversing a decision by the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals and upholding qualified immunity for a police officer who shot and killed Samuel Pauly in an attempt to investigate a traffic incident near Santa Fe, New Mexico in October 2011.
Prior to the shooting, Samuel's brother Daniel was involved in a non-violent road-rage incident in which he stopped his car and confronted two women who he claimed had been tailgating him. Daniel subsequently drove home, where he lived with Samuel. Samuel was at home playing video games and had not been involved in the confrontation. Meanwhile, the occupants of the other vehicle called the police, who were able to locate the house where the brothers lived.
At that point, no crime had been committed and there was no legal justification to arrest anyone or to enter or search any house. While the frequency of "road-rage" incidents is not a healthy sign, they do constitute a fairly common occurrence in American social life.
According to Daniel, when two police officers arrived at the brothers' house they failed to identify themselves. Not realizing that it was the police, and believing that they were being burglarized, the brothers armed themselves with weapons. The brothers warned, "We have guns!" The encounter escalated and there was an exchange of gunfire in which no one was struck. Then a third officer arrived and, without warning, shot Samuel dead.
The phrase "qualified immunity" refers to a judge-made doctrine that has no basis in the text of the US Constitution, notwithstanding the claims by various Supreme Court justices to be handing down the Constitution's "original" meaning. In recent decades, this doctrine has quietly been built up to huge proportions within the judicial system, largely without significant media commentary or public discussion. It now plays an important role in blocking civil rights cases and encouraging the ongoing epidemic of police brutality.
According to this authoritarian and anti-democratic doctrine, a judge can unilaterally decide a case in favor of a police officer--even if the officer's conduct violated the Constitution--if the judge determines that the police officer acted "reasonably" in light of previous Supreme Court decisions. If qualified immunity is awarded to the police officer, the case can be thrown out of court, never going before a jury, and costs can be imposed against the victim or the victim's survivors.
[...] The Supreme Court held that the officer who killed Samuel "did not violate clearly established law" because "existing precedent" had not "placed the statutory or constitutional question beyond debate".
[...] In the written opinion, the justices went out of their way to complain that the lower courts were not granting qualified immunity to police officers often enough.
Clearly, having appointments made by Democrat presidents doesn't lessen Authoritarianism in the USA.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @05:21PM
Yes, there are situations (such as no-knock raids) where both the police and the residents are justified in using deadly force. This makes these very dangerous situations and so the police should use them less and be more careful. I do think they are, about fifteen years ago it seemed like there was some colossal police fuckup on a no-knock raid about every other week, but now those seem less common. Still, they should be a last resort.
However, this is not what is at issue in this case. It is the reasonable belief of the third officer, arriving after the conflict has already begun, and in this case it seems like he did nothing wrong.
Now, if you want to see a real problem, try this:
http://lawofficer.com/tactics-weapons/police-officer-fired-for-not-shooting-man-with-gun/ [lawofficer.com]
Summary: policeman A arrives and confronts a suspect with a gun. Correctly assessing the situation, he concluded that the suspect, even though he was holding a gun, was unlikely to fire. While he is in the process of resolving the situation peacefully, officer B arrives and shoots the suspect. Officer B is justified; he sees an armed suspect apparently threatening a police officer.
Officer A is fired for NOT shooting the suspect.
The suspect's gun turns out to be unloaded.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday January 24 2017, @07:10PM
In this case I think it depends on why exactly the third cop arrived.
Was he responding to the same call as the initial officers? If so, he damn well knew that there was no evidence of any crime and no reason for them to be in this person's home. So why was he shooting? It's not reasonable for an officer to just show up and start shooting with no idea why they're there or who they're shooting at.
On the other hand, if there was a *second* call, either because the first officers requested backup or someone else phoned in the gunshots, then his actions may have been justified. If all he knew about the situation was that officers were under fire, it does seem reasonable to assume the other officers aren't criminals -- even though in this case they were.