Early in the morning of July 15, 2014, Roxanne Torres dropped a friend off at an apartment complex in Albuquerque, N.M. After parking and exiting her car, Torres reentered and remained in the car with the engine running and the car doors locked. At that same time, four New Mexico State Police officers arrived at the complex intending to arrest a woman who was not related to Torres. Two of the officers approached Torres’s car and, with guns drawn, attempted to open the driver side door. Because the officers wore indistinguishable dark clothing and Torres did not hear what they shouted at her, Torres mistook them for carjackers and attempted to drive away. After the car moved forward mere inches, the police opened fire on Torres and she accelerated away. The officers continued shooting at Torres, firing 13 shots in all, two of which struck Torres in the back, paralyzing her right arm. Torres drove a short distance before she was forced by her injuries to stop. When a bystander refused to call police on her behalf, she found another car and drove it to a hospital, where she was airlifted to another hospital due to the seriousness of her injuries.
Torres was subsequently arrested on charges related to fleeing the police. Torres, in turn, sued the police for using excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on “unreasonable searches and seizures.” However, the trial and appeals courts ruled that because Torres was able to escape after being shot, she had not technically been “seized” by the police. In reversing this ruling, the Supreme Court acknowledged that “[b]rief seizures are seizures all the same. As applied to a person, the word ‘seizure’ readily bears the meaning of a laying on of hands or application of physical force to restrain movement, even when it is ultimately unsuccessful.”
Affiliate attorneys Jeffrey T. Green and John L. Gibbons of Sidley Austin LLP and Sarah O’Rourke Schrup of the Northwestern Supreme Court Law Clinic assisted in advancing the amicus arguments in Torres.
The opinion and amicus brief in Torres v. Madrid are available at www.rutherford.org.
The Rutherford Institute, a nonprofit civil liberties organization, provides legal assistance at no charge to individuals whose constitutional rights have been threatened or violated and educates the public on a wide spectrum of issues affecting their freedoms.
Source: https://bit.ly/3dh3TgR
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