Tag Archives: Fourth Amendment

U.S. closes probe of Capitol Police shooting of woman killed in Jan. 6 riot

By Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department has closed its investigation into the death of Ashli Babbitt, a participant in a Jan. 6 riot shot by U.S. Capitol Police, saying there was no evidence to prove the officer who shot her had violated her civil rights.

Federal and local investigators have determined “there is insufficient evidence to support a criminal prosecution,” the Justice Department said in a statement on Wednesday, adding that her family had been informed of the decision.

Babbitt, 35, was an Air Force veteran and ardent supporter of former Republican President Donald Trump.

She was among a large mob of Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, in a failed bid to stop Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s election victory and one of five people to die that day.

Her shooting was captured on video and posted widely on social media. In it, she can be seen climbing through a doorway with a smashed window, when a Capitol Police officer on the other side fires his gun.

Prosecutors have filed charges so far against more than 400 defendants in the Capitol riots, with some facing allegations they conspired to storm the building in advance.

The focus of the investigation into Babbitt’s death, however, entailed whether the officer had deprived her of her constitutional Fourth Amendment right not to be subjected to an unreasonable seizure.

To prove such a case in court, the department would have needed to show not only that the officer used constitutionally unreasonable force, but that he did so “willfully.”

“The investigation revealed no evidence to establish that, at the time the officer fired a single shot at Ms. Babbitt, the officer did not reasonably believe that it was necessary to do so in self-defense or in defense of the Members of Congress,” the department said.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Chris Reese and Howard Goller)

U.S. Supreme Court widens ability to sue police for excessive force

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday expanded the ability of people to sue police for excessive force, ruling in favor of a New Mexico woman who filed a civil rights lawsuit after being shot by officers she had mistaken for carjackers.

The 5-3 decision allowed the woman, Roxanne Torres, to pursue her lawsuit accusing New Mexico State Police officers Richard Williamson and Janice Madrid of violating the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment ban on illegal searches and seizures even though she had not been immediately detained, or seized, in the incident.

The court determined that in order to sue for excessive force under the Fourth Amendment, it is not necessary for a plaintiff to have been physically seized by law enforcement.

“We hold that the application of physical force to the body of a person with intent to restrain is a seizure even if the person does not submit and is not subdued,” conservative Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the ruling.

Roberts was joined in the decision by the court’s three liberals and one of his fellow conservatives, Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Three other conservatives justices dissented. The newest justice, conservative Amy Coney Barrett, did not participate because she had not yet joined the court when the case was argued in October.

In a dissenting opinion, conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch said a “seizure” under the Fourth Amendment has always been defined as “taking possession of someone or something,” and he criticized the court’s contrary conclusion.

“That view is as mistaken as it is novel,” Gorsuch wrote.

The case will now return to lower courts, where the officers could seek to have the lawsuit dismissed on other grounds including the legal doctrine called qualified immunity that protects police and other types of government officials from civil litigation in certain circumstances.

In the 2014 incident, four officers arrived at an apartment complex in Albuquerque and approached Torres, who was sitting in a car. Torres said she fled when she saw people with guns approaching, thinking she was going to be carjacked. Madrid and Williamson fired 13 shots between them, hitting her twice in the back as she drove away in her car.

Torres continued driving but was arrested the next day after being treated in a hospital for her wounds. She was convicted of three criminal offenses, including fleeing from a law enforcement officer.

After Torres sued in a federal court in New Mexico in 2016, the judge dismissed the case, saying there could be no excessive force claim because a “seizure” had not occurred. The Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reached the same conclusion in 2019, prompting Torres to appeal to the Supreme Court.

There is heightened public scrutiny of police conduct in the wake of protests in many cities last year against racism and police brutality. Rulings by the Supreme Court in other cases over police powers are due by the end of June.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)

Federal Judge: NSA Likely Violated Constitution

The bulk collection of phone records of Americans by the National Security Agency has been found to likely violate the Fourth Amendment.

Judge Richard Leon ruled Monday that the NSA’s mass collection of “metadata” falls under the Constitution’s prohibitions against unreasonable search and seizure. The ruling in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia is viewed as a blow to the Obama administration.

Observers say the case will very likely go all the way to the Supreme Court.

“The government does not cite a single case in which analysis of the NSA’s bulk metadata collection actually stopped an imminent terrorist attack,” Judge Leon wrote in his decision. “Given the limited record before me at this point in the litigation – most notably, the utter lack of evidence that a terrorist attack has ever been prevented because searching the NSA database was faster than other investigative tactics – I have serious doubts about the efficacy of the metadata collection program as a means of conducting time-sensitive investigations in cases involving imminent threats of terrorism.”

The ruling by the judge says the lawsuit brought by a conservative lawyer and the father of a Navy soldier is likely to be successful. The judge did grant a reprieve to the NSA by placing his order to stop the NSA collection efforts on hold until the government can appeal.