During a routine traffic stop near Houston in 2016, a police officer killed Ashtian Barnes by blindly firing two shots into his car after jumping onto the doorsill as Barnes began to drive away. Last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled that the shooting was justified by the threat that the officer, Harris County Constable Roberto Felix Jr., faced when he shot Barnes. Last Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously rejected the logic of that decision, which focused on "the moment of the threat" rather than "the totality of the circumstances"—the standard that the Court has said should be applied in use-of-force cases.
"We reject [the 5th Circuit's] approach as improperly narrowing the requisite Fourth Amendment analysis," Justice Elena Kagan writes in Barnes v. Felix. "To assess whether an officer acted reasonably in using force, a court must consider all the relevant circumstances, including facts and events leading up to the climactic moment."
The Court's decision "echoes the common law's historical protection of human life, which restricted the use of deadly force by officers—particularly in cases of flight from minor offenses," says Mike Fox, a legal fellow at the Cato Institute, which submitted a brief supporting the civil rights lawsuit that Barnes' parents filed against Felix. "Deadly force was traditionally reserved for instances of forceful resistance against an officer."
