Judge, Jury, and Executioner: The Excessive Use of Deadly Force by Police Officers

I. INTRODUCTION 155II. THE LACK OF JUDICIAL OVERSIGHT OR CLEAR GUIDANCE ON THE USE OF FORCE BY LAW ENFORCEMENT 157III. INACCURATE ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT LAW ENFORCEMENT........161A. Police Officers' Aggressive Use of Force 161B. The Absence of Effective Deterrents 163C. A Lack of Professionalism and Internal Discipline 166D. Exaggerated Impression of the Danger of Policing 167IV. SLOSHING THROUGH THE MORASS OF REASONABLENESS .... 170A. Police Officer Randall Kerrick 171B. Police Officers Dominique Perez and Keith Sandy 172C. Police Officer Lisa Mearkle 173D. The Reasonable Officer Standard 174V. UNRECOGNIZED BUT PERVASIVE PATTERNS OF EXCESSIVE FORCE 176VI. CONCLUSION: WHOSE LIFE MATTERS MORE? 180I. INTRODUCTIONA series of shootings has started a national debate about the use of deadly force by law enforcement officers. Though this debate has entered mainstream media and the public consciousness, the law gives little guidance on when the use of force by police is justified. While the Supreme Court has made it clear that the Fourth Amendment applies to questions about the use of deadly force, the Court has never given any specific guidance to law enforcement on when the use of deadly force is justified-and the standard of review the Court has promulgated is highly deferential to the judgment of police officers.1The first part of this article examines the Supreme Court's decisions regarding the use of deadly force by police officers, concluding that the Court has failed to provide law enforcement with any meaningful guidance on when the use of deadly force is appropriate.The second part of this article calls into question the Court's justifications for not limiting the use of deadly force by law enforcement. The Court overestimates the deterrent effect of civil rights litigation and places too much confidence in police professionalism on the one hand, while failing to take into account the militarization of law enforcement and exaggerating the inherent dangerousness of police work on the other.The third part of the article illustrates the malleability of the reasonable officer standard promulgated by the Supreme Court. Three recent cases in which a police officer was charged with homicide are explored in order to demonstrate how officers can use unscientific training and tactical practices, along with exaggerated claims regarding the dangerousness of police work, to justify the use of deadly force.The fourth part of the article evaluates the purported need for broad use of force doctrine-the dangerousness of police work-by analyzing available data on the number of homicides committed by law enforcement and number of officers feloniously killed in the line of duty. When the number of homicides committed by law enforcement officers is compared to the number of officers feloniously killed between 2003 to 2009, it was the suspect who was killed 94%-97% of the time.2 A similar analysis of data collected during 2015 also resulted in a finding that when an encounter between police officers and a suspect ended with the death of either the officer or the suspect, it was the suspect who was killed 97% of the time.3The article concludes by arguing that the number of suspects killed by police officers is grossly disproportionate to the number of police officers who are killed by suspects, which suggests that law enforcement officers are using deadly force before any threat to their safety has materialized. …