''Scott v. Harris'', 550 U.S. 372 (2007), was a decision by the

Supreme Court of the United States The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all Federal tribunals in the United States, U.S. federal court cases, and over Stat ...

involving a lawsuit against a

sheriff's deputy A sheriff is a government official, with varying duties, existing in some countries with historical ties to England where the office originated. There is an analogous, although independently developed, office in Iceland, the , which is commonly ...

brought by a

motorist Driving is the controlled operation and movement of a land vehicle, including cars, motorcycles, trucks, and buses. A driver's permission to drive on public highways is granted based on a set of conditions being met, and drivers are required to ...

who was paralyzed after the officer ran his eluding vehicle off the road during a high-speed

car chase A car chase or vehicle pursuit is the vehicular overland chase of one party by another, involving at least one automobile or other wheeled motor vehicle, commonly hot pursuit of suspects by law enforcement. The rise of the automotive industry i ...

. The driver contended that this action was an unreasonable

seizure A seizure is a sudden, brief disruption of brain activity caused by abnormal, excessive, or synchronous neuronal firing. Depending on the regions of the brain involved, seizures can lead to changes in movement, sensation, behavior, awareness, o ...

under the Fourth Amendment. The case also involved the question of whether a police officer's

qualified immunity In the United States, qualified immunity is a legal principle of federal law that grants government officials performing discretionary (optional) functions immunity from lawsuits for damages unless the plaintiff shows that the official violated "c ...

shielded him from suit under

Section 1983 The Enforcement Act of 1871 (), also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act, Third Enforcement Act, Third Ku Klux Klan Act, Civil Rights Act of 1871, or Force Act of 1871, is an Act of the United States Congress that was intended to combat the paramilit ...

. On April 30, 2007, in an 8–1 decision, the court sided with police and ruled that a "police officer's attempt to terminate a dangerous high-speed car chase that threatens the lives of innocent bystanders does not violate the Fourth Amendment, even when it places the fleeing motorist at risk of serious injury or death." In a rare occurrence, the court accepted the presentation of video evidence of the high-speed pursuit. Such procedure is quite uncommon in the Supreme Court and was viewed as part of an interesting relationship between the Supreme Court and technology. The video had a strong effect on the Court's decision and is viewed as a major factor in how the court made its decision. The author of the opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia, in a first-time occurrence ever, posted the video of the car chase online (for access to the video, see external links below). Justice John Paul Stevens, the lone dissenter, argued that the videotape evidence was not decisive, as the majority claimed it to be, and that a jury should determine if deadly force was justified. He stated a jury should be used, instead of the case "being decided by a group of elderly appellate judges," a reference to himself and his colleagues on the court (this sentence is not in the text of the dissent, but he pronounced it while reading the opinion at bench).Associated Pres
"Court Sides With Cops On High-Speed Chase, Supreme Court Rejects Arguments Of Man Paralyzed in Crash Stemming From Police Pursuit"
''CBS News'', April 30, 2007. Three law professors created an experiment based on the video, showing it to over a thousand subjects and then asking them whether they thought the use of deadly force was reasonable. The study found " fairly substantial majority did interpret the facts the way the Court did. But members of various subcommunities did not." The study and the disagreement over the reasonableness of the use of deadly force was reported in the

Harvard Law Review The ''Harvard Law Review'' is a law review published by an independent student group at Harvard Law School. According to the ''Journal Citation Reports'', the ''Harvard Law Review''s 2015 impact factor of 4.979 placed the journal first out of ...

References

External links

* * Supreme Court Scott v. Harris video *
Court-posted format
( mp4 file). *
streaming version, and MPEG4 and MPEG2 downloads

Analysis and editing of the Scott v. Harris video
{{US4thAmendment, seizures, state=expanded United States Supreme Court cases United States Supreme Court cases in 2007 United States Fourth Amendment case law United States Supreme Court cases of the Roberts Court

See also

References

External links