Memphis police officers responded to a nighttime burglary call and saw Edward Garner, an unarmed 15-year-old, fleeing the scene. An officer believed Garner was a suspect and thought he was trying to escape by climbing a fence. Although the officer saw no weapon and believed Garner was unarmed, he shot Garner in the back of the head under a Tennessee statute and police policy authorizing deadly force against a fleeing felon who refuses to halt. Garner died, and his father brought a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 action alleging an unconstitutional seizure.
Does the Fourth Amendment permit police to use deadly force to prevent the escape of an apparently unarmed fleeing felony suspect?
The use of deadly force to stop a fleeing suspect is a seizure subject to the Fourth Amendment's reasonableness requirement. Deadly force may not be used unless the officer has probable cause to believe the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others, and, where feasible, some warning has been given.
No. The Fourth Amendment prohibits the use of deadly force against an unarmed, non-dangerous fleeing suspect; such force is reasonable only when the suspect threatens the officer with a weapon or there is probable cause to believe the suspect has committed a crime involving serious physical harm and poses a danger if not immediately apprehended.
The Court balanced the suspect's fundamental interest in life against the government's interest in effective law enforcement and found the common-law fleeing-felon rule outdated. Because many modern felonies are nonviolent, automatically authorizing deadly force against all fleeing felons is overbroad and unjustified. Killing a non-dangerous suspect does not meaningfully advance law-enforcement interests when capture can often be accomplished later. The Tennessee statute was therefore unconstitutional insofar as it permitted deadly force without regard to whether the suspect posed a serious threat.
Justice O'Connor, joined by Chief Justice Burger and Justice Rehnquist, argued the Court adopted an inflexible constitutional rule that improperly second-guessed police officers and state legislatures. The dissent maintained that the reasonableness of deadly force should depend more heavily on the circumstances confronting officers and the serious nature of felony flight.
Garner is a foundational Fourth Amendment excessive-force decision establishing that police use of deadly force is judged by objective reasonableness and is unconstitutional against non-dangerous fleeing suspects. It sharply limited the old common-law fleeing-felon rule and shaped later force jurisprudence, especially Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386 (1989), which made Fourth Amendment objective reasonableness the general standard for excessive-force claims. It also informs later seizure cases involving force, including Brower v. County of Inyo, 489 U.S. 593 (1989) and Scott v. Harris, 550 U.S. 372 (2007).
Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386 (1989) |
Abstain |
Brower v. County of Inyo, 489 U.S. 593 (1989) |
Abstain |
Scott v. Harris, 550 U.S. 372 (2007) |
Abstain |
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