Graham v. Connor

Incident Summary & Facts

On November 12, 1984, Dethorne Graham, a diabetic, felt an insulin reaction coming on. He asked his friend William Berry to drive him to a convenience store for orange juice. Graham saw a long checkout line, hurried out of the store, and asked Berry to drive him to a friend’s house instead. Charlotte, North Carolina police officer Connor saw Graham “hastily enter and leave the store,” became suspicious, and made an investigative stop about half a mile away. Berry explained that Graham was having a “sugar reaction.” Connor ordered both men to wait while he checked on the store. While Connor called for backup, Graham got out of the car, ran around it twice, sat down on the curb, and passed out briefly.

Backup officers arrived. One rolled Graham over and cuffed his hands tightly behind his back, ignoring Berry’s pleas to get him sugar. Another said Graham was simply “drunk.” Officers carried Graham to Berry’s car and placed him face down on the hood. When Graham regained consciousness and asked them to check his wallet for a diabetic decal, an officer told him to “shut up” and shoved his face against the hood. Four officers threw him headfirst into the police car, and the officers refused orange juice a friend brought. After Connor learned that nothing had happened at the store, officers drove Graham home and released him. Graham suffered a broken foot, cuts on his wrists, a bruised forehead, and an injured shoulder, and he claims a lasting ringing in his ear.

Graham sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. At trial, the district court directed a verdict for the officers under the four-factor Johnson v. Glick substantive due process test, which asks in part whether force was applied “maliciously and sadistically.” The Fourth Circuit affirmed. The evidence was taken in the light most favorable to Graham.

Core Legal Issue

What constitutional standard governs a free citizen’s claim that police used excessive force during an arrest, investigatory stop, or other seizure: the Fourth Amendment’s “objective reasonableness” standard, or a generic substantive due process test?

The Holding

All claims that law enforcement officers used excessive force, “deadly or not,” in the course of an arrest, investigatory stop, or other seizure of a free citizen must be analyzed under the Fourth Amendment’s objective reasonableness standard. The Court vacated the Fourth Circuit’s judgment and remanded for reconsideration under that standard.

The Court’s Analysis:

• Identify the specific right. Section 1983 is “not itself a source of substantive rights,” and there is no generic right to be free from excessive force. For arrests and stops, the Fourth Amendment supplies the “explicit textual source” of protection, as Tennessee v. Garner implicitly held.
• The balancing test and the Graham factors. Reasonableness requires balancing “the nature and quality of the intrusion” against the government’s interests. Courts must give careful attention to the facts of each case, “including the severity of the crime at issue, whether the suspect poses an immediate threat to the safety of the officers or others, and whether he is actively resisting arrest or attempting to evade arrest by flight.”
• The officer-on-the-scene perspective. Force is judged “from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight.” “Not every push or shove” violates the Fourth Amendment. The calculus must allow for the fact that officers “are often forced to make split-second judgments — in circumstances that are tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving.”
• Objective, not subjective. “An officer’s evil intentions will not make a Fourth Amendment violation out of an objectively reasonable use of force; nor will an officer’s good intentions make an objectively unreasonable use of force constitutional.” The “malicious and sadistic” inquiry has “no proper place” in Fourth Amendment analysis. It remains relevant under the Eighth Amendment for convicted prisoners. The Court left open whether the Fourth Amendment protects people after arrest ends and pretrial detention begins, and it expressed no view on qualified immunity.
• Concurrence (Blackmun, joined by Brennan and Marshall). The concurrence agreed that the Fourth Amendment governs here. It would not have foreclosed substantive due process analysis in prearrest cases, since that question was not squarely presented.