Courts

Supreme Court Defends Qualified Immunity For Trigger-Happy Cops, Again

This time they literally couldn't even be bothered to argue about it.

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How the Supreme Court sees victims of police brutality.

Can the current Supreme Court even conceive of a situation where a cop should NOT gun down a citizen of this country? That’s an honest question. What would it even take at this point to get five Supreme Court justices to agree that maybe a police officer should do something other than open fire on a non-blue member of society?

Today, the Supreme Court summarily reversed a Ninth Circuit ruling that cops could be held liable in a case where they opened fire on a woman armed with a kitchen knife. The woman, Amy Hughes, miraculous survived her encounter with American law enforcement, and sued the officer who opened fire on her, trying to pierce the officer’s qualified immunity.

According to the record, Amy Hughes was in the street outside her house in 2010, holding a kitchen knife, “screaming and crying very loudly,” and approaching another woman. The other woman turned out to be Hughes’s roommate. Officer Andrew Kisela arrived on the scene. He was separated from Hughes by a chain link fence and ordered her to drop the knife. Hughes did not immediately comply… which is apparently a capital offense in this country. Kisela shot Hughes several times, saying that he feared she was a danger to the other woman.

Hughes sued Kisela for violating her civil rights. She was blocked by the district court, the Ninth Circuit reversed and allowed the case to go forward, but today the Supreme Court reversed the Ninth Circuit, stating that Kisela enjoyed qualified immunity. The Court held that even if Kisela violated the Fourth Amendment — and the Court pretty clearly didn’t even think that happened — Kisela did not violate any “clearly established law” of the kind that would allow Hughes to pierce the immunity he enjoys from acting as a state official. Then, the Court admonished the Ninth Circuit for using a “general” standard of clearly established law. Evidently, the right not to be gunned down by the police is not nearly specific enough for the Court to take notice.

It was an unsigned opinion, and the Supreme Court declined to hear any argument or briefing on the case. They basically gave Hughes as much consideration as the officer did before trying to kill her.

In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor (joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg) wrote that he Court is sending the signal that officers can “shoot first and think later.”

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Sotomayor is right. At every level, from the Supreme Court to 12 people not clever enough to squirm out of jury duty, the standard seems to be that officers can shoot and shoot and shoot some more, and then think later about how to justify all the shell casings. Nobody seems willing to ask police to devote ADDITIONAL SECONDS towards assessing the situation before they start shooting.

We can’t hold cops accountable for their actions, because right now it is perfectly legal for cops to shoot you for any reason or no reason at all. Prosecutors aren’t willing to stop them, judges aren’t willing to stop them, and politicians are certainly not willing to stop them.

The Supreme Court… they don’t even want to HEAR it. They don’t even want to argue about it anymore. If a cop shoots you, the Supreme presumption is that you deserved it — and even if you didn’t, your life is not protected by “clearly established law.”

I don’t know what set of facts could convince the current Court to break qualified immunity, the majority doesn’t even seem to be intellectually curious about the facts. They’re more worried about the keeping state actors free from civil liability than they are about stopping the killings and brutality.

Asking this Court to rein in the police is like asking the cook to rein in the hunter. Nobody is interested in the perspective of the prey.

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Justices grant one new case, summarily reverse in excessive-force case [SCOTUSblog]

Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

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