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Supreme Court rules for police in two lawsuits claiming excessive force
The rulings are a further sign the court is unwilling to second-guess
police officers responding to emergency calls.
Texas Challenges Elecetion Results at Supreme Court
The Supreme Court ruled for police in two qualified immunity cases,
suggesting that trying to get the court to come around on that issue
will be a tall order.Stefani Reynolds / Getty Images file
Oct. 18, 2021, 8:54 AM PDT
By Pete Williams
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that police officers in two cases should
be shielded from lawsuits claiming their conduct killed one man and
injured another.

The rulings, in cases from California and Oklahoma, are a further sign
that the court is unwilling to second-guess police officers responding
to emergency calls. Both cases resulted in brief, unsigned opinions with
no noted dissents.

In the Oklahoma case, a woman called 911 complaining that her
ex-husband, Dominic Rollice, was intoxicated in her garage and would not
leave. "It's going to get ugly real quick," she said on the call.

After three officers responded, Rollice refused to leave the garage and
grabbed a hammer. He raised it over his head and took a stance as if he
was about throw it, according to court documents. Two of the officers
fired their guns, killing him.

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In the California case, police from Union City responded to a 911 call
from a 12-year-old girl who said her mother's boyfriend, Ramon
Cortesluna, was in the house with a chainsaw. The girl said she was
barricaded in a room with her mother and sister, fearing that he
intended to hurt them.

Police eventually ordered Cortesluna out of the house but noticed that
he had a knife in his pants pocket. An officer put one knee on the left
side of the man's back, near the knife, for no more more than eight
seconds, according to court documents. Cortesluna sued, saying he
suffered emotional and physical pain as a result of excessive force by
police.

In both cases, the Supreme Court said the officers were entitled to the
form of legal protection known as qualified immunity. That judicial
doctrine shields officers from lawsuits unless it can be shown that
their conduct violated a clearly established right under the
Constitution or the law.

As applied by the courts, it requires a lawsuit to show that an
officer's action was virtually the same as conduct ruled impermissible
in a similar lawsuit, a difficult legal standard to meet given the
complexity of law enforcement encounters.

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"We have repeatedly told courts not to define clearly established law at
too high a level of generality," the Supreme Court said in the Oklahoma
case. Qualified immunity protects "all but the plainly incompetent or
those who knowingly violate the law," it added.

Anya Bidwell, a lawyer at the Institute for Justice, a legal advocacy
group, said Monday's rulings demonstrate that the court is "very
deferential toward law enforcement when officers have to make
split-second decisions."

The death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer
thrust the issue of qualified immunity into the national spotlight.
Congress considered a proposal to dial back the protection, but the
legislation stalled.

Other cases are pending before the Supreme Court that challenge law
enforcement conduct when split-second decisions are not an issue. One
involves a refugee from Somalia who was imprisoned for nearly two years.
Her lawsuit says a federal officer falsely implicated her in a crime.

Another lawsuit says an officer held at gunpoint a man who was looking
into the involvement of the officer's son in a drunken driving accident.

The court has not decided whether to take up those cases.

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Pete Williams
Pete Williams is an NBC News correspondent who covers the Justice
Department and the Supreme Court, based in Washington.