Yuck.
This took place in Florida in March of 2004. The dude sobbing on the ground, Jesse Buckley, is a homeless, destitute man who was pulled over for speeding. He refused to sign the speeding citation, and a signature is required by law, so the officer warned him that if he refused to sign, he would be arrested. Buckley said “Arrest me” and didn’t resist at all, but then sat on the ground and cried.
When Buckley continued sitting on the ground crying in spite of the officer’s orders to get into the police car, the officer tased Buckley repeatedly until a backup officer arrived to haul Buckley into the car.
Buckley later sued the police department, arguing that excessive force was used. He didn’t contest that he refused to sign the citation, just the use of the taser.
Two federal judges on the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in September that the use of force was reasonable, not excessive, since:
First, the incident occurred at night on the side of a highway with considerable passing traffic.
Second, the deputy could not complete the arrest — that is, truly control Plaintiff — because Plaintiff was resisting.
Third, the deputy resorted to using the taser only after trying to persuade Plaintiff to cease resisting, after attempting to lift Plaintiff, and after repeatedly and plainly warning Plaintiff that a taser would be used and then giving Plaintiff some time to comply.
This makes zero sense, as the dissenting opinion (in page 21 of the above PDF) pointed out.
The first argument made in the majority position is just batty - Deputy Rackard, the officer, said that the road was “desolate,” “in the middle of no where.” There was no risk to traffic.
And Buckley wasn’t resisting; he volunteered himself for arrest. The question isn’t whether you can tase someone resisting arrest, it’s whether you can tase someone who is peacefully noncomplying. The crime Buckley had commited wasn’t nearly severe enough to justify a taser which left 18 burn scars all over the plaintiff’s body.
And even if it were a significant enough crime, the taser wasn’t working and help from additional officers was on the way. The taser wasn’t compelling Buckley to get up and get into the police car, it was essentially corporal, on-the-spot punishment for not following orders, not a reasonably-used tool necessary for completing the arrest. The arrest clearly would be completed regardless - and it was.
As the dissenting Judge Martin wrote,
“Whatever the debatability of employing a single, controlled electric shock against a non-compliant individual to coerce him into movement, in this case Deputy Rackard repeatedly prodded Mr. Buckley’s body which maximized the level of pain he experienced. In light of the repeated and continuous nature of the force used against Mr. Buckley, the substantial pain and bodily injury that resulted, and the absence of any arguable justification, I have no difficulty in concluding that no particularized preexisting case law was necessary for it to be clearly established that Deputy Rackard’s conduct was unconstitutional. Deputy Rackard’s use of force was so grossly disproportionate to the need for force that no reasonable officer would have believed such conduct was legal.
This case was officially requested for review by the Supreme Court by the ACLU a few days ago. This is such a flagrantly wrong decision, I hope that the court takes it up, but the chances are slim. “It’s very, very, very rare” for the Court to take up cases like this, but if they take any, this should be one of them.
