Caseflicks

Supreme Court of the United States • 2007

Scott v. Harris

550 U.S. 372 | 127 S. Ct. 1769 | 167 L. Ed. 2d 686 | 2007 U.S. LEXIS 4748

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Takeaway

In short, this case holds that police may use force creating a serious risk to a fleeing driver when the driver’s reckless high-speed flight poses an imminent danger to the public, and that video evidence can defeat a claimed factual dispute at summary judgment when it plainly contradicts the opposing account.

Background

A Georgia deputy tried to stop Victor Harris after clocking him at 73 miles per hour in a 55-mile-per-hour zone. Harris instead fled, leading officers on a nighttime chase that lasted about six minutes and nearly ten miles. After Harris escaped an attempted containment in a shopping-center parking lot—colliding with Deputy Timothy Scott's cruiser in the process—Scott became the lead pursuing officer.

The dashboard video showed Harris driving at high speeds on two-lane roads, crossing the double-yellow line, passing other vehicles, and running intersections while police followed with lights and sirens. Scott sought authorization to end the chase and was told to “take him out.” Believing a standard PIT maneuver unsafe at that speed, Scott struck the rear of Harris's car. Harris lost control, crashed, and became quadriplegic.

Harris sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that Scott used excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The District Court denied Scott qualified immunity because it found material factual disputes. The Eleventh Circuit affirmed, treating Harris's account as controlling at summary judgment and concluding that a jury could find Scott's use of potentially deadly force unreasonable under Tennessee v. Garner. The Supreme Court reversed.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether, at summary judgment, the court had to accept Harris's account of the chase when a videotape plainly contradicted that account.

Holding

No. A court need not adopt the nonmoving party's version of facts when the record blatantly contradicts it so that no reasonable jury could believe it.

Reasoning

Ordinarily, a court deciding summary judgment must view evidence and reasonable inferences in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party. In qualified-immunity cases, that ordinarily means accepting the plaintiff's version of disputed events.

But the summary-judgment rule applies only to genuine disputes of material fact. A videotape in the record captured the pursuit, no party claimed it had been altered, and the Court found that it plainly refuted the portrayal of Harris as a controlled driver posing little danger.

The video showed Harris speeding on narrow roads, crossing into opposing lanes, swerving around other cars, running red lights, and requiring officers to make similarly dangerous maneuvers. Because no reasonable jury could credit Harris's contrary description of the danger, the Court evaluated the Fourth Amendment claim using the facts depicted on the videotape.

Issue #2

Whether Scott's intentional ramming of Harris's vehicle was an unreasonable seizure under the Fourth Amendment.

Holding

No. Scott's effort to terminate Harris's dangerous high-speed flight was objectively reasonable, even though it created a serious risk of injury or death to Harris.

Reasoning

Scott conceded that intentionally striking Harris's car to stop it was a Fourth Amendment seizure. The excessive-force claim therefore turned on objective reasonableness: balancing the intrusion on Harris's Fourth Amendment interests against the government's interest in public safety.

The Court declined to treat Tennessee v. Garner as imposing rigid, threshold prerequisites whenever force may be characterized as deadly. Garner applied general Fourth Amendment reasonableness to an officer's shooting of an unarmed fleeing suspect on foot; it did not create a mechanical rule for vehicular pursuits. The governing inquiry remained the totality-of-the-circumstances test of Graham v. Connor.

The video established that Harris's flight posed an actual and imminent danger to motorists, pedestrians who might enter the area, and police officers. Scott's maneuver created a substantial risk of grave injury to Harris, but Harris himself had deliberately created the danger through his reckless refusal to stop, while the persons endangered by continued flight were innocent.

The Court rejected the argument that police were constitutionally required to end the pursuit and allow Harris to escape. Stopping the pursuit would not reliably communicate to Harris that he was free to go, nor would it assure that he would stop driving dangerously. A rule requiring police to abandon pursuits whenever a suspect drives recklessly would create perverse incentives for suspects to evade arrest through greater recklessness.

Accordingly, an officer does not violate the Fourth Amendment by attempting to end a dangerous high-speed chase that threatens innocent bystanders, even if the effort places the fleeing driver at risk of serious injury or death. On these facts, no reasonable jury could find Scott's maneuver unreasonable, so Scott was entitled to summary judgment.

Issue #3

Whether the Court should decide the constitutional question before reaching qualified immunity under Saucier v. Katz.

Holding

Yes, in this case. The Court followed Saucier's required sequence because the Fourth Amendment question was readily resolved.

Reasoning

Under Saucier, courts first ask whether the alleged facts establish a constitutional violation and only then ask whether the right was clearly established. Although the Court acknowledged criticism of that mandatory sequence, it concluded that it need not reconsider Saucier here.

Because the constitutional issue was easy to resolve on the videotaped facts, addressing it first was the better approach and established that Scott committed no constitutional violation. That conclusion made further analysis of whether the asserted right was clearly established unnecessary.

Concurrences

Justice Ginsburg

Reasoning

Justice Ginsburg joined the Court but stressed that the decision did not establish a mechanical per se rule for all high-speed pursuits. The Fourth Amendment inquiry remains circumstance-specific, including the danger to motorists, pedestrians, and officers, as well as whether a safer means of stopping the vehicle was available under the particular conditions.

She also agreed that the Court could answer the constitutional question in this case. Because the video demonstrated that Scott's conduct did not violate the Fourth Amendment, the Court had no need to address whether Saucier's required ordering of constitutional and qualified-immunity questions should be reconsidered.

Justice Breyer

Reasoning

Justice Breyer joined the judgment and agreed that, after watching the videotape, no reasonable jury could find that Scott violated the Constitution. He emphasized that the video was central to his own assessment and underscored the fact-dependent character of the reasonableness inquiry.

He argued that the Court should overrule Saucier's mandatory rule requiring lower courts to decide the constitutional issue before qualified immunity. Courts should instead be allowed to decide the two questions in the order that best fits the case, because the fixed sequence can force unnecessary constitutional rulings, waste judicial resources, and generate confusing decisions in highly fact-specific areas.

Justice Breyer also read the majority's closing formulation as overly absolute if understood as a per se rule. In his view, the constitutionality of ending a high-speed chase may depend on additional circumstances beyond whether the chase threatens innocent bystanders.

Dissents

Justice Stevens

Reasoning

Justice Stevens maintained that the Court improperly displaced the jury's role by treating its own reading of the videotape as the only reasonable one. In his view, the video did not blatantly contradict Harris's evidence or the Eleventh Circuit's account; at most, it supported competing inferences that a jury should resolve.

He read the tape as showing a nighttime pursuit on lightly traveled roads, with no pedestrians and little traffic. Cars may have pulled aside in response to the pursuing police vehicles' sirens rather than because Harris forced them off the road. Harris, though speeding and refusing to stop, remained in control, generally passed only when oncoming traffic was absent, and did not create the “Hollywood-style” danger described by the majority.

Justice Stevens argued that Tennessee v. Garner supplied an important limit on the use of deadly force: it is reasonable only when the suspect poses a serious physical threat and such force is necessary to prevent escape. A jury could find those conditions absent because officers had Harris's license-plate number, could apprehend him later, and had potentially less dangerous alternatives, including stop sticks or a warning.

The majority's speculation that Harris might have continued driving recklessly if police ended the chase, he argued, was both unsupported by the record and inconsistent with the obligation to draw inferences for the nonmoving party. Police-pursuit policies often require officers to discontinue a chase when the danger created by pursuing exceeds the danger posed by a suspect remaining at large.

For Justice Stevens, the Court's broad statement approving attempts to terminate dangerous chases was inconsistent with the individualized reasonableness analysis required by Garner and Graham. Given the disputed degree of danger and the severe consequences of Scott's action, a Georgia jury should have decided whether ramming Harris's car was reasonable.