The Supreme Court unanimously ruled on May 15 that the mother of a man killed by police during a traffic stop may pursue a civil rights lawsuit against the officer who shot him.
The nation’s highest court found that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit wrongly focused solely on the moment that the allegedly excessive force was used, as opposed to the moments leading up to the use of force.
“Today we reject that approach,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in the court’s 9–0 opinion in Barnes v. Felix.
“To assess whether an officer acted reasonably in using force, a court must consider all the relevant circumstances, including facts and events leading up to the climactic moment,” she wrote for the court….