Lawrence O'Donnell uncovers shocking prosecutorial misconduct. (Wilson grand jury.)

[JonLP24]

72. More from him

The Missouri statute says that a police officer can use deadly force in trying to arrest a person they suspect has committed any felony. But in the Garner case, the Supreme Court ruled that using deadly force was unreasonable when it was used in trying to stop a fleeing felon who hadn’t committed a violent felony or who wasn’t dangerous (the facts of Garner involved police shooting at a burglar trying to climb over a fence).“Where the suspect poses no immediate threat to the officer and no threat to others,” the court wrote, “the harm resulting from failing to apprehend him does not justify the use of deadly force to do so.”

Missouri’s statute as written allows police officers to use deadly force to arrest someone who is guilty, say, only of forging a check. As a matter of a state criminal prosecution of a police officer, this inconsistency doesn’t matter. There is no requirement that state law fit with the standards for a federal civil rights suit against a police officer, which is what Garner was. If the attorneys supervising the grand jury thought that Garner somehow “overrides” the state statute, they were wrong.

But that doesn’t mean that the lawyers shouldn’t have given the grand jury their revised statement of the law — whatever exactly it was (I haven’t found it in the files given to us, and we may never see it). The Garner standard is the more sensible standard. In fact, the Missouri pattern jury instructions (the instructions judges have to read if a law enforcement officer’s use of force is at issue at trial) already adopt the Garner standard. till, Missouri law stands unchanged.

Of course, it may be that Wilson’s use of deadly force was justified even under the higher, Garner standard. Garner also says that deadly force may be used “if the suspect threatens the officer with a weapon or there is probable cause to believe that he has committed a crime involving the infliction or threatened infliction of serious physical harm.” What we will be debating (and what we should be debating) is whether when Wilson shot Brown, he was shooting at a violent felon or (to quote another passage from Garner) shooting at an “unarmed, nondangerous suspect.”

http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/commentary-wilson-case-illustrates-why-we-should-change-missouri-s-use-force-law

Credentials


Professor Chad Flanders joined the SLU LAW faculty in 2009. He teaches and writes in the areas of criminal law, constitutional law, and the philosophy of law.

Prof. Flanders received his doctorate in philosophy from the University of Chicago in 2004 and his law degree from Yale Law School in 2007. After law school, Prof. Flanders served as a law clerk to the Hon. Warren Matthews on the Alaska Supreme Court and the Hon. Michael McConnell on the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Since arriving at SLU, Prof. Flanders has published more than 20 articles or essays in journals such as the Florida Law Review, the California Law Review, the Missouri Law Review and the Alaska Law Review, and his work on Bush v. Gore has been cited by state and federal courts. He has also written numerous opinion pieces for national and local newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and Politico.

In the 2012-2013 academic year Prof. Flanders was a Fulbright Lecturer at Nanjing University, China. During 2013-2014 Flanders was a visiting professor at DePaul University School of Law.
http://www.slu.edu/colleges/law/slulaw/faculty/cflande2