NCJ Number
122040
Date Published
1989
Length
4 pages
Annotation
Based on Tennessee v. Garner, a plaintiff must establish three key elements in order to recover a right to civil rights lawsuit for the use of deadly force; the plaintiff must establish that there had been a seizure, that the seizure had been unreasonable, and that the constitutional violation had proximately caused injury to the plaintiff.
Abstract
In the case of Christopher Cameron, the undisputed facts disclosed that Cameron was not seized within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. The legal definition of seizure determines that whenever a police officer accosts an individual and restrains his freedom to walk away, he has seized that person. A person is seized only when his freedom of movement is restrained by means of physical force or a show of authority. In the Cameron case, there was no exercise of physical force. Cameron elected to flee and not be restrained. The officers' show of authority by firing their weapons did not stop or restrain him. Additionally, the use of deadly force alone does not constitute a seizure. Consequently, the reasonableness of the officers' use of their weapons in attempting to apprehend Cameron cannot be challenged. Finally, the use of firearms by the officers was obviously not the cause of death; Cameron killed himself when he elected to run onto a heavily traveled high-speed freeway. The district court was found to be correct, and the summary judgement ordered by the district court is affirmed.