The Supreme Court ruled today, in a case sure to please law-enforcement officers, that a Georgia man is not entitled to sue for the crippling injuries he suffered when a deputy sheriff rammed his car to end a high-speed chase.
By 8 to 1, the justices found in favor of the Coweta County deputy sheriff, Timothy Scott, and against the driver, Victor Harris, who was 19 when his car hurtled down an embankment and overturned, leaving him a quadriplegic, on the night of March 29, 2001.
The court found, contrary to Mr. Harris’s contention, that the deputy’s decision to ram the car was reasonable under the circumstances. The facts in the case — supported by a videotape of the chase, which reached speeds of 90 miles an hour on rain-slicked roads — were so damning against Mr. Harris that there was no need for a jury to consider them, the justices ruled, again contrary to Mr. Harris’s argument.
The car chase “posed a substantial and immediate risk of serious physical injury to others,” Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the court. “No reasonable jury could conclude otherwise.”
The court’s ruling overturned those made in the case by a federal district court and by the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta. Those courts had held that Mr. Harris should be able to have a jury determine whether the deputy violated his constitutional rights by unreasonable application of deadly force.
“We are happy to allow the videotape to speak for itself,” Justice Scalia wrote in today’s decision. Making no effort to mask his disdain for the lower courts’ conclusions, he wrote that to read them, “one gets the impression that respondent, rather than fleeing from police, was attempting to pass his driving test.”
The Supreme Court justices acknowledged that high-speed chases by the police can pose a danger, and said that they must be judged according to the specific facts. “We think it appropriate in this process to take into account not only the number of lives at risk, but also their relative culpability,” Justice Scalia wrote. After all, he went on, it was the young driver who set off the terrible chain of events.
The lone dissenter, Justice John Paul Stevens, said that the majority was wrong to sweep aside the reasoning of the lower court judges, “who are surely more familiar with the hazards of driving on Georgia roads than we are.”
Justice Stevens said there had been no reason for the deputy to chase Mr. Harris for mile after mile, since the police already had the license number of his car. And the sharp disagreement between judges of the lower courts and the eight justices on the high court was itself a sign that there was enough dispute on the facts to warrant a jury’s consideration, Justice Stevens said.
But Justice Scalia rejected that reasoning, declaring himself “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.”
“It is obvious the perverse incentives such a rule would create,” he said. “Every fleeing motorist would know that escape is within his grasp, if only he accelerates to 90 miles per hour, crosses the double-yellow line a few times, and runs a few red lights.”
Mr. Harris’s lawyers had cited a 1985 case from Tennessee, in which the Supreme Court ruled that the police had acted unreasonably in shooting an unarmed suspect in the back as he fled a house he was suspected of burglarizing. The facts in the Georgia case, and the police response, were far different, the eight justices ruled today.
The lopsided outcome was not a surprise, given the tone of the arguments before the high court on Feb. 26. Most of the justices expressed shock at Mr. Harris’s recklessness, as displayed on the videotape, and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said the pursuers could have concluded that Mr. Harris was fleeing from a crime or driving a stolen car.
Mr. Harris’s original offense was driving 73 m.p.h. in a 55-mile-an-hour zone. Had he just pulled over and stopped that night, he would have been issued a speeding ticket. Instead, the speeding citation was served in his hospital room, after his life had changed forever.
Video: http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/video/scott_v_harris.rmvb
