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Title: Supreme Court case to shape Ferguson investigation
Source: St. Louis Dispatch/AP
URL Source: http://www.stltoday.com/news/nation ... 6a-57cc-9990-631cc1697e60.html
Published: Aug 22, 2014
Author: Eileen Sullivan
Post Date: 2014-08-22 03:51:50 by scrapper2
Keywords: Graham v. Connor, SCOTUS decision on use of forc
Views: 13
Comments: 1

WASHINGTON It started with a bottle of orange juice 30 years ago.

The national legal standards that govern when police officers are justified in using force against people trace their lineage to a 1984 case from Charlotte, N.C. In that case, a diabetic man’s erratic behavior during a trip to a convenience store for juice to bring up his low blood sugar led to a confrontation with officers that left him with injuries from head to foot.

Dethorne Graham’s subsequent lawsuit against police for his injuries led to a 1989 Supreme Court decision that has become the prism for evaluating how police use force. As soon as Ferguson police Officer Darren Wilson shot Michael Brown on Aug. 9, the Graham v. Connor case became the foundational test for whether Wilson’s response was appropriate or criminal.

To most civilians, an 18-year-old unarmed man may not appear to pose a deadly threat. But a police officer’s perspective is different. And that is how an officer should be judged after the fact, Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote in the 1989 opinion.

“The ‘reasonableness’ of a particular use of force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight,” Rehnquist wrote.

The sequence of events that led to the death of Brown, a black man shot by a white officer, remains unclear. An autopsy paid for by Brown’s family concluded that he was shot six times, twice in the head. The shooting has prompted multiple investigations and triggered days of rioting reflecting long-simmering racial tensions in a town of mostly black residents and a majority white police force.

Attorney General Eric Holder said Thursday that the incident had opened a national conversation about “the appropriate use of force and the need to ensure fair and equal treatment for everyone who comes into contact with the police.”

A grand jury is hearing evidence to determine whether Wilson, 28, who has policed the St. Louis suburbs for six years, should be charged in Brown’s death.

The key question will be: Would a reasonable police officer, with a background such as Wilson’s, have responded the same way?

The answer is typically yes.

“Except in the most outrageous cases of police misconduct, juries tend to side with police officers and give them a lot of leeway,” said Woody Connette, the attorney who represented Graham.

In Graham’s case, his behavior as he was experiencing low blood sugar looked similar to that of a belligerent drunk.

On Nov. 12, 1984, Graham, 39, felt the onset of an insulin reaction and asked a friend to drive him to buy juice, Connette said.

According to the Supreme Court, Graham rushed into the store and grabbed the orange juice but saw the line was too long, so he put the juice down and ran back to the car.

Charlotte police Officer M.S. Connor followed him. When Connor stopped Graham’s friend’s car, Graham explained he was having a sugar reaction. But Connor didn’t believe him.

As Connor was following up with the store, Graham left the car, ran around it twice, then sat down and passed out for a short time. Other police officers arrived, and Graham was rolled over and handcuffed. The officers lifted Graham from behind and placed him facedown on the car.

When Graham asked the officers to check his pocket for something he carried that identified him as a diabetic, one of the officers told him to “shut up” and shoved his face against the hood of the car. Then four officers grabbed Graham and threw him headfirst into the police car. Once police confirmed no crime had been committed inside the store, they dropped Graham off at his home and left him lying in the yard, Connette said.

Graham ended up with a broken foot, cuts on his wrists, a bruised forehead and an injured shoulder.

Graham, who died in 2000, lost in his first jury trial, and appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, which set out the standards still used today. He then had a new trial, which he also lost.

The Graham decision found that an officer’s use of force should be considered on the facts of each case. Officers are to weigh the seriousness of the crime, whether the suspect poses a threat to the safety of police or others and whether the suspect is trying to resist arrest.

Since then, police officers across the U.S. have been trained to use force in that context. States and police departments have their own policies, but the standards set in the Graham case are always the minimum. Some departments, such as the Los Angeles Police Department, even reference Graham v. Connor in their manuals.

The police force in St. Louis, where officers shot and killed a knife-wielding robbery suspect 10 days after the Ferguson shooting, also alludes to the Graham standards.

The jury that acquitted four Los Angeles police officers in the beating of Rodney King in the early 1990s was instructed to consider the Graham standards — the officers’ “reasonable perceptions” — as they deliberated.

Officers are to be judged by those standards — even if things look different to people who weren’t involved.

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#1. To: scrapper2 (#0)

The law says that immunity doesn't attach to criminal acts. The real problem these days is not being able to trust any entity or reporter to tell the truth.

The courts (especially the supremes) have already limited freedom and have intruded upon it for years by whittling away at liberty and privacy year after year. Some believe that the supremes sanctify tyranny, I don't.

The govt is playing the shell game with all of us. We keep watching them move the three shells around and whenever we pick one ... we lose and there's no pea under it ... guess what ??? There ain't no fucking pea and there ain't no fucking liberty. Our liberty is being limited to however much the PTB think we should have at their discretion.

We know right from wrong and really don't need a santification board to rubber stamp government encroachments. Fuck em. (ALL OF THEM).

"This place called earth is hell (though it could be heaven).” Those that haven't noticed are without a soul to be redeemed.

noone222

noone222  posted on  2014-08-22   6:03:57 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


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