Quick Case Review — Plumhoff v. Rickard

And how it's relevant to the current day

I’m normally not a big fan of Friday articles (and by the numbers, neither are you guys!), but I think today makes a good exception. First, if you didn’t see the late edit in the Minneapolis shooting thread, here’s a newly released video showing the cellphone footage the officer in front of the Pilot (now identified as Johnathan Ross) was taking at the time.

This video has blown up a couple previously popular narratives, including that Good was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time — something repeated by Adam Schiff. However (as these things tend to do), new narratives have popped up in place of the disproven ones, including that “the first shot was justified, but the last two were not.”

That’s what brings us to this brief review of Plumhoff v. Rickard, a case argued before the Supreme Court in 2014. In that case, Donald Rickard (and his passenger, Kelly Allen) were pulled over by West Memphis Police Department Lieutenant Joseph Forthman for having a headlight out. Upon approaching the car, Forthman noticed an indentation in the windshield roughly the size of a head and ordered Rickard to step out of the car.

Instead of complying, Rickard led police (at that point Forthman + four other patrol cars) on a high-speed chase on Interstate 40 reaching speeds over 100 miles per hour. Upon exiting the freeway, Rickard’s car collided with the car of officer Jimmy Evans and spun into a parking lot, where it got tied up with Sergeant Vance Plumhoff’s cruiser.

At this point, Evans and Plumhoff approached the car with guns drawn. Rickard kept attempting to free his vehicle to flee, so Plumhoff fired 3 shots into the car. Soon after, Rickard was able to get his car free and spin away from police down another street.

Officers unloaded 12 more shots into the car as Rickard was fleeing, causing Rickard to crash. The combination of gunshot wounds and car crash wounds killed both Rickard and Allen, his passenger.

Rickard’s daughter sued basically everybody involved for civil rights violations, and the case wound its way up to the Supreme Court — culminating in a 9-0 ruling for the police. As usual, the entire ruling is interesting, but here’s the portion that’s relevant to the “excessive force” of the last 12 shots:

We now consider respondent’s contention that, even if the use of deadly force was permissible, petitioners acted unreasonably in firing a total of 15 shots. We reject that argument. It stands to reason that, if police officers are justified in firing at a suspect in order to end a severe threat to public safety, the officers need not stop shooting until the threat has ended. As petitioners noted below, “if lethal force is justified, officers are taught to keep shooting until the threat is over.” 509 Fed. Appx., at 392.

Here, during the 10-second span when all the shots were fired, Rickard never abandoned his attempt to flee. Indeed, even after all the shots had been fired, he managed to drive away and to continue driving until he crashed. This would be a different case if petitioners had initiated a second round of shots after an initial round had clearly incapacitated Rickard and had ended any threat of continued flight, or if Rickard had clearly given himself up. But that is not what happened.

If we apply this legal standard to the Good case (and we must, because it’s the legal standard), not only were shots #2 and #3 also justified if shot #1 was justified — the officers could have legally continued firing on Good’s car as it careened down the street!

That’s today’s brief case review — enjoy your Friday!

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