Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1 (1985)

"The officer may use all the necessary means
to effect the arrest of a fleeing suspect."
-- Tennessee statute: Police Department policy.

Memphis, Tennessee, 1974. Police are looking for a prowler. They spot an unarmed teenager in the back yard. He tries to get away, climbing over a chain-link fence. A policeman shoots the boy in the back of the head.

That's legal, according to Tennessee law: "If, after notice of the intention to arrest the defendant, he either flee or forcibly resist, the officer may use all the necessary means to effect the arrest." The defendant, 15-year-old Edward Garner, dies on the operating table. His father sues.

In 1984, the U.S. Supreme Court declares: "The use of deadly force is a self-defeating way of apprehending a suspect and so setting the criminal justice mechanism in motion." Justice Byron White writes: "The use of deadly force to prevent the escape of all felony suspects, whatever the circumstances, is constitutionally unreasonable. It is not better that all felony suspects die than that they escape. Where the suspect poses no immediate threat to the officer and no threat to others, the harm resulting from failing to apprehend him does not justify the use of deadly force to do so. It is no doubt unfortunate when a suspect who is in sight escapes, but the fact that the police arrive a little late or are a little slower afoot does not always justify killing the suspect. A police officer may not seize an unarmed, nondangerous suspect by shooting him dead."

For more...

Police Use of Nondeadly Force to Arrest
Fighting Police Abuse

AMENDMENT 4 Protection Against Unreasonable Searches and Seizures

Passed by Congress September 25, 1789. Ratified December 15, 1791.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. [^].

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