WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously Tuesday that six West Memphis police officers are immune from a lawsuit over two deaths stemming from a high-speed chase in 2004.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote the opinion, which dismissed claims that the officers used excessive force and violated the driver's civil rights. The court considered the case March 4 in an hour-long hearing largely focused on what happened the night officers shot at driver Donald Rickard and passenger Kelly Allen, not whether they should be legally liable for doing so.
The opinion reverses a decision by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee that a suit against the police on behalf of Rickard's child, Whitne Rickard, could proceed. The district court's ruling was upheld by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals based in Cincinnati.
The suit contended that police used excessive force because Rickard was not armed and had not committed a serious criminal offense. The officers said they should be shielded from liability by qualified immunity because they were acting to protect the public.
North Little Rock attorney Michael Mosley, who represented the police officers, said Tuesday that the officers have always maintained their actions were reasonable.
"I believe this is vindication of that," he said. "We're very pleased. It's been a long time coming."
He said he was pleased that the court ruled not only that the officers couldn't be sued, but also that the shooting was reasonable.
"I told them at oral arguments that it would be very easy to rule on the qualified immunity, not on the merits," Mosley said.
The justices' probing questions on what happened in 2004 made him expect the decision, he said.
The officers fatally shot Rickard and Allen, both of Memphis, on a Memphis street after a chase across the Mississippi River with speeds topping 100 mph.
Rickard had been stopped for a broken headlight but sped away after the officer who pulled the car over asked the driver to step out of the car. The officer had noticed a "head-sized" indentation in the windshield, according to court records.
Rickard drove east on Interstate 40, crossing the Mississippi River into Memphis. He turned south on Danny Thomas Boulevard and lost control of his car near Jackson Avenue, west of downtown.
Rickard's vehicle spun into a parking lot, striking a police car driven by Sgt. Vance Plumhoff. Officers John Gardner and Troy Galtelli, who also had pursued Rickard across the state line, blocked Rickard's Honda Accord and ordered him out.
Rickard tried to drive away, nearly running over the officers and prompting one of them to fire three shots into the car. He then backed out of the police-car barrier and began driving away, at which point Plumhoff, Gardner and Galtelli fired 13 more shots at the vehicle.
Moments later, Rickard's car crashed through a brick wall and into a house at Jackson Avenue and Manassas Street in Memphis.
A coroner's report ruled that Rickard and Allen had both suffered fatal head wounds.
Much of the five-minute chase and the shooting was captured by video cameras mounted in the police vehicles. The video was not shown during oral arguments, but several justices said they had seen it.
In Tuesday's opinion, Alito wrote that Rickard's continued flight posed a "grave public safety risk" and that the officers acted reasonably in using deadly force to end the chase.
"It makes sense that, if officers are justified in firing at a suspect in order to end a severe threat to public safety, they need not stop shooting until the threat has ended," the opinion states.
Law enforcement officers are protected from lawsuits when acting to protect the public unless the plaintiff can show that the officers violated a constitutional right that was "clearly established" in law when the conduct occurred.
The lower courts held that previous case law states that immunity only applies when officers act reasonably, and because the video evidence showed that the police fired on unarmed, fleeing drivers, a jury could determine that the police were not acting reasonably.
The case to which the 6th U.S. Circuit pointed as justification for allowing the Rickard case to move forward, Scott v. Harris, was decided in 2007, years after Rickard and Allen were shot.
Mosley argued in March that the law as it existed in 2004 did not clearly establish that this instance of deadly force was "objectively unreasonable" or that it violated the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment protection that life, liberty and property can't be seized unless a person is convicted of a crime.
The family's attorney, Gary Smith of Memphis, told the justices that the officers should have stopped the car in another way, such as shooting at its tires, and that police didn't need to use lethal force when Rickard's car was partially pinned in a parking lot.
The case is Plumhoff v. Rickard, 12-1117. A separate case filed by Allen's family is pending in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee. The other officers involved in the 2004 pursuit were Joseph Forthman, Lance Ellis and Jimmy Evans.
"We'll see what the district court does with that now," Mosley said of the Allen family suit.
Tuesday's opinion didn't address whether a passenger in a high-speed chase would have a claim against officers, but said that Allen's presence in the vehicle did not justify Rickard's Fourth Amendment claim.
"After all, it was Rickard who put Allen in danger by fleeing and refusing to end the chase, and it would be perverse if his disregard for Allen's safety worked to his benefit," Alito wrote.
Metro on 05/28/2014