The Supreme Court has reversed the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in a police shooting case where a police officer who fired six times at the car of a fleeing arrestee. The Court found that the officer was entitled to qualified immunity in a civil suit. The ruling comes as prosecutors filed charges against two Louisiana officers in the Fifth Circuit in the shooting death of a 6-year-old autistic boy. Thirty-two-year-old Derrick Stafford of Mansura and 23-year-old Norris Greenhouse Jr., of Marksville each is charged with second-degree murder and attempted second-degree murder. Bond has been set at $1 million for each officer. The father has not been told that his son was killed.
Some accounts say that the shooting occurred after a chase and that, after reaching a deadend, Stafford may have backed up toward the officers who opened fire. However, those accounts do not jive with the new report from a videotape that Stafford may have been surrendering at the time of the shooting (even assuming that he had engaged in the effort to flee).
This week it was revealed that body camera video showed the father, Chris Few, with his hands up in the air and not posing any threat to the officers when they opened fire — seriously wounding Few and killing Jeremy Mardis. The shooting occurred in Marksville, Louisiana where the two men were working secondary jobs as marshals. Notably, the case shows how small this community is. District Attorney Charles A. Riddle recused himself in light of the fact that one of his top assistant prosecutors is the father of Greenhouse.
The earlier Fifth Circuit case originated in Texas where Tulia, Texas, police officer Chadrin Lee Mullenix fired six times at a car of a fleeing arrestee, Israel Leija Jr. Leija had fled after a police officer approached his car at a drive-in restaurant to arrest him. Leija drove at speeds between 85 and 110 miles per hour during the chase and called the Tulia police dispatcher to day that he had a gun and would shoot at officers if they didn’t give up the chase. The police set up spike strips at three locations, including at Cemetery Road beneath an overpass. Mullenix drove to the Cemetery Road overpass and asked a dispatcher if his supervisor wanted him to shoot at the car. It is not clear if he heard his supervisor’s advice to wait to see if the spikes worked. Mullenix fired when the car a killing Leija. The Fifth Circuit ruled that Mullenix’s actions were objectively unreasonable and Mullenix was not entitled to qualified immunity.
The Supreme Court reversed and found that Mullenix had acted amid a “hazy legal backdrop” of excessive force cases involving car chases. The Court found that prior cases “have not clearly established that deadly force is inappropriate to conduct like Leija’s” and that “never found the use of deadly force in connection with a dangerous car chase to violate the Fourth Amendment, let alone to be a basis for denying qualified immunity.” Justice Sotomayor filed a dissent that noted that Mullenix “puts forth no plausible reason to choose shooting at Leija’s engine block over waiting for the results of the spike strips.”
The Texas case contained obviously distinguishing facts that the suspect had made threatening calls and was driving at a high rate of speed to evade police. The Louisiana case reportedly involved a man with his hands up at the time of the shooting. The Louisiana case is also now a criminal matter but will likely soon be also a civil case by this grieving family.
I personally think that SLM and BLM is the same as BS. But bulls do not defecate on this blog.
Yes. I am confused by the jumboliah here. Jumboliah is a food dish served in New Orleans with a mixture of a lot of things in one stew.
But I am presently in New Orleans and the two cops who shot the driver and the kid is in the news here. It does not look good for the two cops. There is a group forming in the bar which I attend and it is going to be named: Small Lives Matter or SLM. I read the Sup Court case of Tennessee v. Garner. The two cops might invoke that and invoke Black Lives Matter and say that they were protecting life and kin.
Karen S.- The rancher was Jack Yantis of Council, Idaho.
There was a collison involving one of his bulls and a Suburu with 2 occupants.
From what I’ve read, paramedics were attempting to extract the two injured people from the vehicle, and the injured 2500 lb. bull was charging at people on the scene.
Mr. Yantis was notified by the dispatcher of the situation, and, according to his wife and nephew, was a few feet from the injured bull with his rifle, to put the bull down with a head shot.
(The bull had already been shot numerous times by the deputies, which only served to enrage it even more).
According to his wife and nephew, a deputy grabbed Mr. Yantis from behind and spun him around. At that point, his rifle may have discharged.
Then both deputies fired at Yantis, fatally wounding him.
His wife suffered a heart attack at the scene, and is still hospitalized (this happened on Nov.1).
Terrible tragedy, and it looks like it could have been avoided.
Maybe we should start a conversation with this case:
Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1 (1985)[1], was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that, under the Fourth Amendment, when a law enforcement officer is pursuing a fleeing suspect, he or she may not use deadly force to prevent escape unless “the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others.”
Do we think that the Supreme Court is going to overturn or alter the Garner case?
I don’t think so.
isaac:
Thank you. I did have two stories confounded. It sounds like the father did engage in a police chase with his kid in the car, so I’m still upset with him. I hope they release the body cam video. Transparency is crucial. How did this happen? Did one officer fire accidentally, causing the other to start shooting? Did they lose their temper? What I most want to know is if the officers were aware that there was a child in the car.
Such a horrible, preventible tragedy.
Plus there is an unfortunate story about a rancher and his bull involved in a shooting.
Shooting the child was self defense. The child may have grown up, been mad at the police for arresting his father, learned how to shoot a gun, and come after them.
/sarc off
“Blacks who kill whites are always found guilty
**cough**OJ Simpson**cough**
The Supremes just gave a green light to continued use of deadly force for no reason. I’m with Sotomayor on this. The cops will be found guilty. Blacks who kill whites are always found guilty, not so the white cops who kill Blacks.
This week it was revealed that body camera video showed the father, Chris Few, with his hands up in the air and not posing any threat to the officers when they opened fire
Incomprehensible.
“focus on the speeding felon with spikes in the tires ”
I don’t think that case troubles many people.
Two many cases spoil the broth. Yeah, I said “two” not “too”. What I am suggesting here is that discussing both cases and overlapping the facts sews confusion. Yes, “sews”. We need to post the precedents which are at issue in each case. In one case you had a stopped car with hands up dont shoot facts at issue. In the other you had a road rage speeding felon whose car and perhaps gun posed a threat to persons other than the two cops standing over the guy with hands up dont shoot. Oh, I am confusing the two cases in one sentence. Just like I complained about in my first sentence. So. What are the Supreme Court precedents and how would either of these two cases possibly convince some Justices to alter those precedents? Maybe one article or one topic for each of the new cases or incidents thrown up together here.
Also, what is the ethnicity of the two Louisiana cops in the photo? Are they “black”? The phrase “black lives matter” has some relevance here. What if the dead kid had been black? Al Sharptongue would be down there now raging up Cajuns to go burn down some convenience stores. Well, this is Louisiana. You folks on the blog must know what a “Ragin Cajun” is. Al Sharptongue would harangue and encourage some folks from the Big Apple to come in and do some lootin and shootin and perhaps some arson. But if the two cops in Louisiana who shot the white kid are black then the “black lives matter” issue has another twist. Or another fork in the road. Or in Louisiana, a fork in a toad.
Maybe we should just focus on the speeding felon with spikes in the tires who was shot. After more comments from the blog readers I might discuss some relevant precedents with y’all in another comment. Woof.
And the father is at least partly responsible here, fleeing from the cops with his child inside.
Terrible decision, but likely one in a long string.
NBC:
Local NBC affiliate WDSU:
Why shoot at a car rather than the guy you are trying to arrest?
The boy was reportedly in the back seat.
The wording in the story is odd, that the officers shot “at the car“.
Given that they hit the kid 5 times, I wonder if they were shooting at the person in the back seat, who may have been moving into the front.
Horrible.
Did the guy with the kid in the car do more than just put his hands up? Did he drive recklessly with his 6 year old son in the car? I cannot believe these cops intended to shoot the boy. Did they know he was in the car? These cops won’t be able to explain away the video. Adrenalin is a powerful force.
Reblogged this on The Grey Enigma.
It would be interesting to know why “the science geek” feels compelled to post such bland and nonspecific comments in nearly every thread. They look like spam.
Karen, read the post more carefully. The guy that called and threatened to kill cops was not the guy with his kid in the car. The guy with his kid in the car is the guy with his hands up. These are two very different scenarios. One is iffy but the other is clearly police idiocy and murder.
will be interesting to see how this turns out
The science geek
http://www.thesciencegeek.org
I am not sure how they are going to explain shooting a kid when the father has his hands in the air.
What a tragedy.
Whether or not the officers involved are found guilty, I am heartbroken that a father would be so lost that he engaged in a high speed police chase with his 6 year old son in the car, during which time he called 911 and threatened to shoot cops. The cops killed that child, but his own father put him in danger. Driving at such speeds, he could have wrecked the car and killed that chid himself, as well as innocent bystanders. No matter what, he made a terrible series of bad decisions when that child was his duty to protect.
Did he also mention to 911 that he had a small child in the car with him? Did those officers have any idea there was a child onboard? What was their reasoning for shooting when they’d just deployed a spike strip? Had he driven over the spike strip and was still fleeing on the rims? Heading towards a blockade of police cruisers? If the body camera video showed the driver had his hands up, I assume this was also visible to the officers- that the video didn’t have to be zoomed in to show this.
I hope this case is transparent and they release all evidence to the public.
No matter what, that poor child is gone and his family must be heartbroken.