Maryland Cop Who Recklessly Shot a 5-Year-Old Boy Got Qualified Immunity
During an August 2016 standoff with an armed woman at an apartment in Baltimore County, Maryland, a police officer fired his rifle through an interior wall into the kitchen. The bullet struck the woman, Korryn Gaines, in the upper back, then ricocheted off the refrigerator, striking her 5-year-old son, Kodi, in the cheek.
The officer, Baltimore County Cpl. Royce Ruby, later testified that he fired the “head shot” without a clear view of Gaines, saying he could see only her braids and the barrel of the shotgun through his rifle scope. He also said he could not see Kodi but knew that he was in the kitchen and that “there’s a possibility” the boy would be hit by the bullet. A witness testified that Gaines, explaining his decision to take the shot, described himself as “hot” and “frustrated.”
It was understandable that Ruby was hot. The police had cut off power to the apartment building, which was sweltering without air conditioning. It was also understandable that he was frustrated. At that point, the standoff, during which more than 30 officers surrounded the building, had dragged on for more than six hours. Police had been told that Gaines “had a history of mental illness and that she had been off her medication,” as the Maryland Supreme Court later noted. “Officers testified that Ms. Gaines acted erratically, sometimes negotiating with officers, at other times threatening them and cutting off contact.”
It is harder to fathom why Ruby decided to fire his rifle even though he recognized that he was endangering a little boy and even though he was not facing an “imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury.” The Maryland Supreme Court accepted that Gaines “may have raised her shotgun” but “was not aiming it directly toward officers.” It nevertheless ruled that Ruby was entitled to qualified immunity, which shields police officers from federal civil rights claims unless their alleged misconduct violated “clearly established” rights.
Based on that conclusion, the court overturned $32 million in damages that a jury had awarded Kodi. The boy’s father, Corey Cunningham, is now asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review the Maryland Supreme Court’s decision. “Obviously unlawful conduct alone clearly establishes the law such that qualified immunity does not apply,” his petition argues, citing Supreme Court precedents to that effect. “Conduct that is so egregious and obviously unlawful as to shock the conscience necessarily forecloses qualified immunity.”
The Supreme Court, the Cato Institute notes in a brief supporting Cunningham’s petition, “has held that some rights violations are sufficiently obvious to violate clearly established law even without factually similar precedent.” It urges the justices to clarify that a court should not grant qualified immunity to “a police officer who committed a conscience-shocking rights violation simply because it could find no prior decision involving nearly identical facts.” In this case, Cato says, “it is self-evident that the officer’s conscience-shocking conduct violated the right of Kodi, an innocent bystander, to be free from arbitrary state action.”
The deadly encounter with Gaines began after she failed to appear in court for alleged traffic violations. Trying to serve a warrant for her arrest, two Baltimore County police officers knocked on the door of her apartment and announced themselves. Getting no response, they kicked in the door and saw Gaines sitting on the floor with a shotgun in her lap. She remained armed but contained throughout
Article from Reason.com
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