A Stitch in Haste

Taser first and ask questions later?

Edward Casey went to the Federal Heights, Colorado, municipal courthouse to contest a traffic ticket. After losing his case, he walked to the parking lot to retrieve money from his truck to pay the fine, carrying with him the court file. On his way back to the courthouse he was grabbed, tackled, Tasered, and beaten by city police officers.

Try to absorb this: A nonviolent individual committing (at worst) a trivial nonviolent misdemeanor (improperly removing a file from a courthouse) — and in the process of "uncommitting" said trivial misdemeanor by returning to the courthouse — gets tasered:

At that point, Officer Malee Lor arrived in her patrol car. Concluding that Mr. Casey "needed to be controlled," she fired her M26 Taser at him. ... There is conflicting testimony on how quickly Officer Lor fired. One independent eyewitness testified that "[s]he wasn't there longer than a couple seconds."

That was only the first tasering:

According to the witnesses, the officers brought Mr. Casey to the ground, handcuffed him tightly, and repeatedly banged his face into the concrete. After Mr. Casey was on the ground, one of the officers, Clint Losli, also Tasered him by pressing the electrical barbs at the end of the Taser directly into him without launching them. Officer Lor discharged her Taser again and shocked another officer[.]

The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, in overturning a lower court motion to dismiss Casey's civil rights lawsuit, not only held that a reasonable jury could find that his Fourth Amendment rights were violated, but essentially said that there is no way to conclude that his rights were not violated:

The absence of any warning — or of facts making clear that no warning was necessary — makes the circumstances of this case especially troubling. Officer Lor gave Mr. Casey no opportunity to comply with her wishes before firing her Taser. ... Her conduct could not be justified by Mr. Casey's resistance to her commands because she did not give him any commands to obey. We have located no published decision in which an officer's use of a Taser has been upheld in circumstances this troubling.

Glad to hear that.

My position is unchanged: With few if any exceptions, taser use is reasonable, and should be legal, only in circumstances when the use of a firearm would also be reasonable and legal.

The case is Casey v. City of Federal Heights, 06-1426 (10th Cir., Dec. 10, 2007) (PDF - 20 pages).