holding that a police officer’s pursuit of a fleeing felon in an automobile played a “causal role” in an ensuing wreck, “but not the kind of cause the law recognizes as culpable.... [A] criminal’s effort to shift the blame [to police] ... is not one that any legal system can accept.”
How later courts described this case
- holding that a police officer’s pursuit of a fleeing felon in an automobile played a “causal role” in an ensuing wreck, “but not the kind of cause the law recognizes as culpable.... [A] criminal’s effort to shift the blame [to police] ... is not one that any legal system can accept.”
- collecting cases in which prior crimes included participation in a major narcotics ring, assault, violent assault of a police officer, and firing a gun
- noting that the plaintiff was "a desperate man taking desperate measures”
- “Where a suspect threatens an officer with a weapon such as a gun or a knife, the officer is justified in using deadly force.... On the other hand, the mere fact that a suspect possesses a weapon does not justify deadly force.”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
REINHARDT, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I join fully in Judge Fletcher’s opinion for the court, on the understanding that officers may not use deadly force against an otherwise nondangerous felony suspect simply because a chase of that suspect, high-speed or otherwise, would become or does become dangerous. Rather, as I understand the controlling law, if a high-speed chase of a nondangerous felony suspect would be, or becomes, dangerous, the officers must terminate the chase. In other words, the chase itself cannot create the danger that justifies shooting a suspect who, under Garner, may not otherwise be shot. I do not understand the out-of-circuit cases discussed in Judge Fletcher’s excellent opinion and in the dissent to hold otherwise.