High court: police can use violent means to end high-speed chases

Police have discretion to use ramming tactics to end high-speed chases without facing future lawsuits filed by the fleeing suspects.

In an important ruling defining Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures in the context of high-speed police chases, the US Supreme Court on Monday gave a green light to law enforcement to use violent force to stop fleeing suspects who pose a substantial and immediate risk of serious physical injury to others.

"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," writes Justice Antonin Scalia in the majority opinion.

The 8-to-1 decision stems from a March 2001 high-speed police chase in Coweta County, Ga., that ended with the 19-year-old suspect becoming a quadriplegic after a deputy sheriff forced the teen's car off the road where it overturned in a wreck.

The driver, Victor Harris, later sued Deputy Timothy Scott for using excessive force to end the high-speed pursuit.

Lawyers for Deputy Scott argued that the suit should be dismissed because he was covered by qualified immunity.

Mr. Harris's lawyers countered that the deputy could be sued because his decision to ram Harris's car was unreasonable in light of clearly established Fourth Amendment protections.

To decide the case, the majority justices relied in part on a police videotape of the chase. Justice Scalia writes that the videotape displayed a different version of the facts than those portrayed by the appeals court panel that upheld the Harris lawsuit against the deputy.

Scalia said the appeals court offered a more benign description of Harris's conduct during the chase. He said the appeals court made it sound like Harris was attempting to pass a driving test rather than fleeing from police.

"The videotape tells quite a different story," Scalia writes. "Far from being the cautious and controlled driver the lower court depicts, what we see on the video more closely resembles a Hollywood-style car chase of the most frightening sort."

Justice John Paul Stevens wrote a lone dissent. He agreed with the appeals court's characterization of Harris's driving during the chase and said it was not clear that the late-night pursuit in rural Georgia threatened the life of any innocent bystander.

The deputy sheriffs could have used less dangerous tactics, including simply calling off the chase once they'd secured the driver's license number for later arrest, he said.

Stevens said that rather than creating a nationwide rule on the issue, such questions should be left to a jury to decide whether the officer acted reasonably or not.

The decision in Scott v. Harris is important because it offers law-enforcement officials across the country guidance in how to properly respond in high-speed chases. In some cases it could encourage more aggressive efforts to take violent action to end pursuits that are deemed particularly dangerous to bystanders.

Many police departments have enacted pursuit policies that discourage the use of violent means to end a chase.

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