On the night of March 29, 2001, a Georgia police officer clocked Victor Harris' vehicle traveling at 73 mph on a road with a 55 mph speed limit. The officer activated his blue flashing to tell Harris to pull over; instead, he sped away, initiating a chase down what is in most portions a two-lane road, at speeds exceeding 85 mph. Another officer, Timothy Scott, learned of the chase via radio and joined the pursuit.
In the midst of the chase, Harris pulled into the parking lot of a shopping center and was nearly boxed in by the various police vehicles, but evaded the trap by making a sharp turn, colliding with Scott’s police car, exiting the parking lot, and speeding off once again down a two-lane highway.
Scott took over as the lead pursuit vehicle. Six minutes and nearly 10 miles after the chase had begun, Scott decided to attempt to end the chase by employing a maneuver which usually causes the fleeing vehicle to spin to a stop, and got permission from his supervisor to do so. But instead of doing that, Scott sped up to bump the rear of Harris' car, causing Harris to lose control of his vehicle, which left the roadway, ran down an embankment, overturned, and crashed. Harris was badly injured and was rendered a quadriplegic. Video of the chase is available online here.
In an 8-1 decision authored by Justice Scalia today, the Court ruled that such manuevers were reasonable under the circumstances in order to prevent Harris from injuring innocents in his chase, and cleared Officer Scott and the department from any liability in the matter. Writes Justice Scalia (and if you want to understand why lawyers are fans of his clear writing, regardless of the outcomes, do read):
So how does a court go about weighing the perhaps lesser probability of injuring or killing numerous bystanders against the perhaps larger probability of injuring or killing a single person? We think it appropriate in this process to take into account not only the number of lives at risk, but also their relative culpability. It was [Harris], after all, who intentionally placed himself and the public in danger by unlawfully engaging in the reckless, high-speed flight that ultimately produced the choice between two evils that Scott confronted. Multiple police cars, with blue lights flashing and sirens blaring, had been chasing respondent for nearly 10 miles, but he ignored their warning to stop. By contrast, those who might have been harmed had Scott not taken the action he did were entirely innocent. We have little difficulty in concluding it was reasonable for Scott to take the action that he did.
But wait, says [Harris]: Couldn’t the innocent public equally have been protected, and the tragic accident entirely avoided, if the police had simply ceased their pursuit? We think the police need not have taken that chance and hoped for the best. Whereas Scott’s action -- ramming respondent off the road -- as certain to eliminate the risk that respondent posed to the public, ceasing pursuit was not. First of all, there would have been no way to convey convincingly to respondent that the chase was off, and that he was free to go. Had respondent looked in his rear-view mirror and seen the police cars deactivate their flashing lights and turn around, he would have had no idea whether they were truly letting him get away, or simply devising a new strategy for capture. Perhaps the police knew a shortcut he didn’t know, and would reappear down the road to intercept him; or perhaps they were setting up a roadblock in his path. ... Given such uncertainty, respondent might have been just as likely to respond by continuing to drive recklessly as by slowing down and wiping his brow.
Second, we are loath to lay down a rule requiring the police to allow fleeing suspects to get away whenever they drive so recklessly that they put other people’s lives in danger. It is obvious the perverse incentives such a rule would create: Every fleeing motorist would know that escape is within his grasp, if only he accelerates to 90 miles per hour, crosses the double-yellow line a few times, and runs a few red lights. The Constitution assuredly does not impose this invitation to impunity-earned-by-recklessness. Instead, we lay down a more sensible rule: A police officer’s attempt to terminate a dangerous high-speed car chase that threatens the lives of innocent bystanders does not violate the Fourth Amendment, even when it places the fleeing motorist at risk of serious injury or death.
The car chase that respondent initiated in this case posed a substantial and immediate risk of serious physical injury to others; no reasonable jury could conclude otherwise.
(Emphasis added.) Justices Ginsburg and Breyer, in separate concurrences, tried to mitigate the hard-and-fastness of the rule Scalia announced, hoping for future rulings to be more fact-specific depending on the circumstances of the chase.
In lone dissent, Justice Stevens argues that the level of the initial offense did not justify deadly force in response: "Even though [Harris'] original speeding violation on a four-lane highway was rather ordinary, his refusal to stop and subsequent flight was a serious offense that merited severe punishment. It was not, however, a capital offense, or even an offense that justified the use of deadly force rather than an abandonment of the chase." Instead, he suggests, since they had the guy's license plate, they could have abandoned the chase and just found him later.
Moreover, he says, the other eight justices spent too much time trying to analyze the videotape themselves, that a more lenient interpration to Harris was possible, and that, basically, the other eight justices are old fogeys who don't know how the kids drive these days:
I can only conclude that my colleagues were unduly frightened by two or three images on the tape that looked like bursts of lightning or explosions, but were in fact merely the headlights of vehicles zooming by in the opposite lane. Had they learned to drive when most high-speed driving took place on two-lane roads rather than on superhighways -- when split-second judgments about the risk of passing a slow-poke in the face of oncoming traffic were routine -- they might well have reacted to the videotape more dispassionately.
Oral argument transcipt, if you're interested. Tell me what you think.