High Court: Police Can Force Fleeing Suspects to Crash

The U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling Tuesday that was based on a controversial wreck that happened over six years ago. In March 2001, a Georgia police officer, Timothy Scott, was pursuing 19-year-old Victor Harris after clocking him driving 73 miles per hour in a 55-mile-per-hour zone. A videotape shows that the Coweta County deputy pursued Harris for over six minutes, during which time he averaged nearly 90 miles per hour, crossing the double yellow line to pass other cars, and running red lights.

In order to bring the pursuit to a halt, the officer intentionally bumped into Harris’s car, causing Harris to lose control of the car and crash, leaving him a quadriplegic.

Harris sued Scott, his lawyer saying that the police should have either continued the chase or simply let Harris escape. The Supreme Court disagreed conclusively, with the justices voting 8-1 that the officer did not violate the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment by causing the crash. Writing for the court, Justice Antonin Scalia said that Harris had put bystanders and other officers at "great risk of serious injury," saying that the pursuit resembled "a Hollywood-style car chase of the most frightening sort."

In 1985, the Supreme Court said that police cannot use deadly force on a fleeing suspect who is not posing a threat of serious physical harm to others, after considering the case of an officer who shot and killed a boy who was running from police after stealing a purse. But in Tuesday’s ruling, the court said they were "loath to lay down a rule requiring the police to allow fleeing suspects to get away whenever they drive so recklessly that they put other people’s lives in danger."

The only dissenting voice in the decision was Justice John Paul Stevens, who claimed that the other judges were "unduly frightened" by images on the videotape of the pursuit, because they look like explosions but were actually the headlights of passing vehicles. Stevens, 87, said that the other justices might have ruled differently "had they learned to drive when most high-speed driving took place on two-land roads rather than on superhighways."

The video showing the crash is posted on the Supreme Court’s website along with the court’s opinion.