County of Sacramento, et al. v. Teri Lewis and Thomas Lewis, Personal Representatives of the Estate of Philip Lewis, Deceased (523 U.S. 833)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided May 26, 1998 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 523 U.S. 833 · 118 S. Ct. 1708
- Decided
- May 26, 1998
- Term
- October Term 1997
- Vote
- 9–0
- Majority author
- Justice Souter
- Issue area
- Economic Activity
- Disposition
- Reversed
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
Opinion excerpt
Justice Souter delivered the opinion of the Court. The issue in this ease is whether a police officer violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of substantive due process by causing death through deliberate or reckless indifference to life in a high-speed automobile chase aimed at apprehending a suspected offender. We answer no, and hold that in such circumstances only a purpose to cause harm unrelated to the legitimate object of arrest will satisfy the element of arbitrary conduct shocking to the conscience, necessary for a due process violation. I On May 22, 1990, at approximately 8:30 p.m., petitioner James Everett Smith, a Sacramento County sheriff’s deputy, along with another officer, Murray Stapp, responded to a call to break up a fight. Upon returning to his patrol car, Stapp saw a motorcycle approaching at high speed. It was operated by 18-year-old Brian Willard and carried Philip Lewis, respondents’ 16-year-old decedent, as a passenger. Neither boy had anything to do with the fight that prompted the call to the police. Stapp turned on his overhead rotating lights, yelled to the boys to stop, and pulled his patrol car closer to Smith’s, attempting to pen the motorcycle in. Instead of pulling over in response to Stapp’s warning lights and commands, Willard slowly maneuvered the motorcycle between the two police cars and sped off. Smith immediately switched on his…
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