Andrew Kisela is an Arizona police officer who shot and wounded Amy Hughes in May 2010. At the time Hughes was in her backyard holding a kitchen knife at her side, about 6 feet away from her roommate, Sharon Chadwick. A chain link fence separated Kisela and two other officers from Hughes.
Hughes sued Kisela and an appellate court had ruled that the case could proceed. The Supreme Court reversed the lower court, however, issuing an unsigned decision that Kisela’s actions were covered by his qualified immunity as a police officer.
Justice Sonia Sotamayor released a stinging dissent in the case, joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Full decision is here (PDF).
Hughes appeared “composed and content,” Record 109, and did not look angry. See 862 F. 3d, at 778. At no point during this exchange did Hughes raise the kitchen knife or verbally threaten to harm Chadwick or the officers. Chadwick later averred that, during the incident, she was never in fear of Hughes and “was not the least bit threatened by the fact that [Hughes] had a knife in her hand” and that Hughes “never acted in a threatening manner.” Record 110–111. The officers did not observe Hughes commit any crime, nor was Hughes suspected of committing one. See 862 F. 3d, at 780.
Nevertheless, the officers hastily drew their guns and ordered Hughes to drop the knife. The officers gave that order twice, but the commands came “in quick succession.” Id., at 778. The evidence in the record suggests that Hughes may not have heard or understood the officers’ commands and may not have been aware of the officers presence at all. Record 109–110, 195, 323–324 (Officer Kunz’s testimony that “it seemed as though [Hughes] didn’t even know we were there,” and “[i]t was like she didn’t hear us almost”); id., at 304 (Officer Garcia’s testimony that Hughes acted “almost as if we weren’t there”). Although the officers were in uniform, they never verbally identified themselves as law enforcement officers.
Kisela did not wait for Hughes to register, much less respond to, the officers’ rushed commands. Instead, Kisela immediately and unilaterally escalated the situation. Without giving any advance warning that he would shoot, and without attempting less dangerous methods to deescalate the situation, he dropped to the ground and shot four times at Hughes (who was stationary) through a chainlink fence. After being shot, Hughes fell to the ground, screaming and bleeding from her wounds. She looked at the officers and asked, “‘Why’d you shoot me?’” Id., at 308. Hughes was immediately transported to the hospital, where she required treatment for her injuries. Kisela alone resorted to deadly force in this case. Confronted with the same circumstances as Kisela, neither of his fellow officers took that drastic measure.
. . .
This unwarranted summary reversal is symptomatic of “a disturbing trend regarding the use of this Court’s resources” in qualified-immunity cases. Salazar-Limon v. Houston, 581 U. S. ___, ___ (2017) (SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari) (slip op., at 8). As I have previously noted, this Court routinely displays an unflinching willingness “to summarily reverse courts for wrongly denying officers the protection of qualified immunity” but “rarely intervene[s] where courts wrongly
afford officers the benefit of qualified immunity in these same cases.” Id., at ___–___ (slip op., at 8–9); see also Baude, Is Qualified Immunity Unlawful? 106 Cal. L. Rev. 45, 82 (2018) (“[N]early all of the Supreme Court’s qualified immunity cases come out the same way—by finding immunity for the officials”); Reinhardt, The Demise of Habeas Corpus and the Rise of Qualified Immunity: The Court’s Ever Increasing Limitations on the Development and Enforcement of Constitutional Rights and Some Particularly Unfortunate Consequences, 113 Mich. L. Rev. 1219, 1244–1250 (2015). Such a one-sided approach to qualified immunity transforms the doctrine into an absolute shield for law enforcement officers, gutting the deterrent effect of the Fourth Amendment.The majority today exacerbates that troubling asymmetry. Its decision is not just wrong on the law; it also sends an alarming signal to law enforcement officers and the public. It tells officers that they can shoot first and think later, and it tells the public that palpably unreasonable conduct will go unpunished. Because there is nothing right or just under the law about this, I respectfully dissent.