The Next Tennessee v. Garner or Graham v. Connor? SCOTUS oral arguments set for next week

https://open.substack.com/pub/johnshjarback/p/the-next-tennessee-v-garner-or-graham?r=1z6equ&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) will hear oral arguments in a case known as Barnes v. Felix on Wednesday January 22nd. It will surely have far-reaching implications for how the courts asses police use of force and whether or not force is determined as “excessive” or not. The decision, which will likely come down in the summer, may impact use of force judgements, police departmental policy, etc.

The two main SCOTUS decisions impacting how force is interpreted in a legal context are Tennessee v. Garner (1985) and Graham v. Connor (1989). In Garner, SCOTUS struck down a Tennessee law that allowed police to use deadly force to prevent the escape of a fleeing felon. A Memphis PD officer shot and killed 15-year-old Edward Garner as he was hopping a fence to allude police following a burglary. He was unarmed and posed little threat. The decision essentially lifted the floor for those remaining police departments who were still following the “fleeing felon” standard – forcing them to adopt deadly force policies that only allowed officers to discharge their firearms in “defense of life” situations (ASIDE: many metropolitan PDs had adopted more restrictive policies following that of the NYPD through the 1970s and early 1980s).