Tennessee v. Garner

Incident Summary & Facts

At about 10:45 p.m. on October 3, 1974, Memphis Police Officers Elton Hymon and Leslie Wright answered a “prowler inside call.” A neighbor said she had heard glass breaking and that “they” or “someone” was breaking in next door. Hymon went behind the house, heard a door slam, and saw someone run across the backyard. The suspect, Edward Garner, stopped at a 6-foot chain-link fence at the edge of the yard. Using a flashlight, Hymon could see Garner’s face and hands. He saw no sign of a weapon and was “reasonably sure” Garner was unarmed. He thought Garner was 17 or 18 years old and about 5‘5” to 5‘7”. In fact Garner was a 15-year-old eighth-grader, 5‘4” and about 100–110 pounds.

Hymon called out “police, halt” and took a few steps toward him. Garner began to climb the fence. Convinced that Garner would escape if he made it over, Hymon fired his revolver, hitting Garner in the back of the head and killing him. Hymon testified that he could not have caught Garner, citing the fence, the darkness, his heavy equipment and boots, and Garner’s youth. Ten dollars and a purse from the house were found on the body. Hymon acted under a Tennessee statute allowing an officer to “use all the necessary means to effect the arrest” of a fleeing or resisting suspect, and under a department policy permitting deadly force in burglary cases.

Garner’s father sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. After a bench trial, the district court ruled for all defendants. The Sixth Circuit ultimately reversed, holding the statute unconstitutional as applied. The State of Tennessee (which had intervened to defend the statute) appealed, and the city sought certiorari.

Core Legal Issue

Whether the Fourth Amendment permits police to use deadly force to prevent the escape of an apparently unarmed, nondangerous suspected felon.

The Holding

Deadly force “may not be used unless it is necessary to prevent the escape and the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others.” The Tennessee statute was invalid insofar as it authorized Hymon’s shooting. The Sixth Circuit was affirmed and the case remanded on the city’s possible Monell liability.

The Court’s Analysis:

• Apprehension by deadly force is a Fourth Amendment seizure. Its reasonableness depends on “not only when a seizure is made, but also how it is carried out,” and is judged by balancing the nature of the intrusion against the governmental interests. “The intrusiveness of a seizure by means of deadly force is unmatched.”
• “A police officer may not seize an unarmed, nondangerous suspect by shooting him dead.” But deadly force is permitted “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,” if it is necessary to prevent escape, and “if, where feasible, some warning has been given.”
• The common-law fleeing-felon rule no longer fits. Most felonies are no longer capital crimes, the felony/misdemeanor line is now “minor and often arbitrary,” and the rule arose when deadly force could be inflicted “almost solely in a hand-to-hand struggle,” before police carried handguns. Most police departments already restricted deadly force to dangerous suspects.
• The Court rejected the argument that the rule demands “impossible, split-second evaluations of unknowable facts,” noting that police make “similarly difficult judgments” elsewhere. On these facts, Hymon “could not reasonably have believed that Garner—young, slight, and unarmed—posed any threat,” and burglary alone does not automatically justify deadly force.
• Dissent (O’Connor, J., joined by Burger, C.J., and Rehnquist, J.): The dissent stressed the “difficult, split-second decisions” officers face. In its view, deadly force as a last resort against a fleeing nighttime burglary suspect is reasonable.