The justices held that courts must look at the Fourth Amendment when considering such cases.
The Supreme Court unanimously ruled on May 15 that the mother of a man killed by police during a traffic stop may pursue a civil rights lawsuit against the officer who shot him.
The nation’s highest court found that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit wrongly focused solely on the moment that the allegedly excessive force was used, as opposed to the moments leading up to the use of force.
“Today we reject that approach,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in the court’s 9–0 opinion in Barnes v. Felix.
“To assess whether an officer acted reasonably in using force, a court must consider all the relevant circumstances, including facts and events leading up to the climactic moment,” she wrote for the court.
Kagan recounted the facts of the case.
The case goes back to April 28, 2016, when Harris County, Texas, traffic enforcement officer Roberto Felix Jr. responded to a radio alert about an automobile that had outstanding toll violations. Felix spotted the car and pulled it over. The driver, Ashtian Barnes, directed his car to the shoulder of the highway, the opinion said.
Felix asked Barnes for his driver’s license and proof of insurance. Barnes said he didn’t have his license on him and that the car was a rental. Barnes while speaking was rummaging through papers in the car, which prompted Felix to tell him repeatedly to stop “digging around.”
Felix told Barnes he smelled marijuana and asked if anything was in the car that he should know about. Barnes said there might be identification in the trunk and opened the trunk from his seat. Felix directed Barnes to leave the vehicle, but Barnes opened the door without exiting and turned his ignition on, the opinion said.
Felix drew his gun as the car began moving forward and shouted an expletive in ordering Barnes not to move. Unable to see inside the car because his head was positioned above the roof, Felix fired twice into the car. Barnes stopped the car but was dead by the time back-up arrived.
