Connor was that an officer’s actions leading to a suspect’s death may be legal if the officer believed his or her life was at risk - even if, in hindsight, it becomes clear there was no such danger. That means jurors must not consider what they would have done in Chauvin’s shoes, but rather, what any reasonable officer would have done under the same circumstances.Īmong the implications of Graham v. “The ‘reasonableness’ of a particular use of force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight,” Rehnquist wrote. In its unanimous opinion written by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, the court said whether an officer used a proper level of force had to be viewed from the officer’s perspective. It bore some similarities to the arrest of Floyd last May 25, when Floyd repeatedly said he couldn’t breathe as Chauvin, who is white, kneeled on the Black man’s neck for nearly 9 1/2 minutes. ![]() Connor involved a 1984 arrest in North Carolina in which officers manhandled diabetic Dethorne Graham, brushing off his pleas for treatment when he said he was having a potentially deadly insulin reaction. Connor ruling in 1989, lower courts were often at odds about how to determine whether an officer on trial used an unreasonable, and therefore illegal, amount of force.
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