10/05/2012 - Myclipp

The New York Times/ - Politics, Ter, 15 de Maio de 2012
CLIPPING INTERNACIONAL (Supreme Court)
A Ticket, 3 Taser Jolts and, Perhaps, a
Trip to the Supreme Court
WASHINGTON — There have been many hundreds of
varied rulings in the lower courts on when the use of
Taser stun guns by the police amounts to excessive
force, and sooner or later the Supreme Court will
have to bring order to this area of the law. Next week,
the justices are scheduled to decide whether to hear
an appeal from three Seattle police officers who say
they are worried about the future of what they call “a
useful pain technique.”The case involves Malaika
Brooks, who was seven months pregnant and driving
her 11-year-old son to school in Seattle when she was
pulled over for speeding. The police say she was going
32 miles per hour in a school zone; the speed limit was
20. Ms. Brooks said she would accept a ticket but drew
the line at signing it, which state law required at the
time. Ms. Brooks thought, wrongly, that signing was an
acknowledgment of guilt. Refusing to sign was a crime,
and the two officers on the scene summoned a
sergeant, who instructed them to arrest Ms. Brooks.
She would not get out of her car. The situation plainly
called for bold action, and Officer Juan M. Ornelas met
the challenge by brandishing a Taser and asking Ms.
Brooks if she knew what it was. She did not, but she
told Officer Ornelas what she did know. “I have to go to
the bathroom,” she said. “I am pregnant. I’m less than
60 days from having my baby.” The three men
assessed the situation and conferred. “Well, don’t do it
in her stomach,” one said. “Do it in her thigh.” Officer
Ornelas twisted Ms. Brooks’s arm behind her back. A
colleague, Officer Donald M. Jones, applied the Taser
to Ms. Brooks’s left thigh, causing her to cry out and
honk the car’s horn. A half-minute later, Officer Jones
applied the Taser again, now to Ms. Brooks’s left arm.
He waited six seconds before pressing it into her neck.
Ms. Brooks fell over, and the officers dragged her into
the street, laying her face down and cuffing her hands
behind her back. In the months that followed, Ms.
Brooks gave birth to a healthy baby girl; was convicted
of refusing to sign the ticket, a misdemeanor, but not of
resisting arrest; and sued the officers who three times
caused her intense pain and left her with permanent
scars. The officers won a split decision in October from
a 10-member panel of the United States Court of
Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco. The
majority said the officers had used excessive force but
nonetheless could not be sued because the law on the
question was not clear in 2004, when the incident took
place. While the ruling left the three officers in the
clear, it did put them and their colleagues on notice
that some future uses of Tasers would cross a
constitutional line and amount to excessive force.
Chief Judge Alex Kozinski dissented on the first point,
saying Ms. Brooks had been “defiant” and “deaf to
reason” and so had brought the incident upon herself.
As for the officers, he said: “They deserve our praise,
not the opprobrium of being declared constitutional
violators. The City of Seattle should award them
commendations for grace under fire.” Another
dissenter, Judge Barry G. Silverman, said “tasing was
a humane way to force Brooks out of her car.” “There
are only so many ways a person can be extracted from
a vehicle against her will, and none of them is pretty,”
he explained. “Fists, batons, chokeholds, tear gas and
chemical spray all carry their own risks to suspects and
officers alike.” The bottom line, in any event, was that
the officers had won. They have nonetheless appealed
to the Supreme Court, in an effort to clear their names
and preserve the freewheeling use of “a useful pain
technique.” Their employer, the City of Seattle, seems
to think they have gone rogue. In a separate Supreme
Court filing, Seattle disavowed what it called the
officers’ “ ‘sky is falling’ interpretation” of the Ninth
Circuit’s decision, which said only, as the city put it,
that “three applications of a Taser in drive-stun mode
in less than a minute on a pregnant woman who does
not pose a safety threat” may give rise to a lawsuit for
a jury to sort out. Seattle, which said it was liable for
any damages in the case, urged the justices not to
hear the officers’ appeal. So did Ms. Brooks, who lost
in the Ninth Circuit but is still pursuing claims under
state law. But several police groups, including the Los
Angeles County Police Chiefs’ Association, asked the
Supreme Court to hear the officers’ appeal because
the Ninth Circuit’s decision “damages the rule of law.”
“It won’t be long,” their brief said, “before the word
spreads throughout society’s criminal underground that
the Ninth Circuit hasn’t simply given them a ‘get out of
jail free’ card, but a ‘never have to go to jail in the first
place’ card.” Michael F. Williams, a lawyer at Kirkland
& Ellis, which represents Ms. Brooks, said the criminal
justice system would endure even if the police were
barred from delivering thousands of volts of electricity
into the body of a pregnant woman who refused to sign
a piece of paper. “The officers are trying to defend
inexcusable conduct,” he said. “They inflicted
enormous pain on a woman who was especially
vulnerable over what was essentially a traffic violation.”
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