Nahmod Law

Background At the outset, note that intent is a condition precedent for a Fourth Amendment violation. The Supreme Court put it this way:

It is clear . . . that a Fourth Amendment seizure does not occur whenever there is a governmentally caused termination of an individual’s freedom of movement. . ., nor even whenever there is a governmentally caused and governmentally desired termination of an individual’s freedom of movement . . . but only when there is a governmental termination of freedom of movement through means intentionally applied.

Brower v. County of Inyo, 489 U.S. 593 (1989)(emphasis in original), a Fourth Amendment roadblock case.

Seizures In Fourth Amendment cases involving an officer’s use of force where intent is present, it is crucial to distinguish between two additional Fourth Amendment questions: whether there was a seizure and, if there was, whether the seizure violated the Fourth Amendment. Thus, the seizure question serves an important gatekeeper function.

For example, in California v. Hodari D., 499 U.S. 621, 111 S. Ct. 1547, 113 L. Ed. 2d 690 (1991), the Court held that where police make a show of authority but the subject does not yield, there is no seizure for Fourth Amendment purposes. In Hodari, police chased a person who, in the course of fleeing from them but before he was physically stopped by a tackle, discarded what turned out to be cocaine. Ruling that this evidence could be introduced in the criminal proceeding, the Court ruled that there was no seizure. The Court observed that a seizure required either the application of physical force or submission to the assertion of authority, neither of which was present here at the time the cocaine was discarded.

The Shot Suspect Who Escapes What of a situation in which there was an application of physical force because the suspect was shot but there was no apparent submission to the assertion of authority? Does this still constitute a seizure? The Supreme Court, resolving a split in the circuits and following the common law, answered this question in the affirmative.

Torres v. Madrid, 141 S. Ct. 989 (2021), involved a section 1983 Fourth Amendment excessive force claim brought by a plaintiff who was fired at by police officers 13 times in an attempt to stop her, a suspected carjacker. Although she was struck twice, she escaped and drove 75 miles to a hospital, but was arrested the following day. The Court, in an opinion by Chief Justice Roberts, ruled that she was seized when she was shot: this was an intentional application of physical force to her body with the intent to subdue, even though she did not submit and was not subdued at the time. There were important differences at common law between seizures by control and seizures by force, with the common law considering a touching to be a seizure. The majority also reasoned that requiring the taking of control for a seizure would be difficult to apply in cases involving the application of force. It thus rejected the defense argument that a seizure be defined as the acquisition of control: this theory was inconsistent with the history of the Fourth Amendment and precedent.

Justice Gorsuch, dissented, joined by Justices Alito and Thomas, arguing that a seizure requires “taking possession of someone or something.” Justice Barrett did not participate in the decision.

Comments

The reasoning in Torres applies equally to intentional shootings, tasings and beatings. These are all seizures, triggering Fourth Amendment analysis, because they all implicate personal security, the core of the Fourth Amendment.

If Torres had come out the other way, not only would the Fourth Amendment’s exclusionary rule not be timely implicated in many such cases, but claims of excessive use of force by police officers against those who escape would be governed by substantive due process under which the applicable standard is “purpose to do harm,” County of Sacramento v. Lewis, 523 U.S. 833 (1998), a much heavier burden than unreasonableness under the Fourth Amendment. See Nahmod, Civil Rights & Civil Liberties Litigation: The Law of Section 1983 §3:52 (2021-22)(West/Westlaw).

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