Supreme Court rules for inmate with excessive force claim

The Supreme Court on Monday made it easier for pre-trial inmates to bring claims against jail officials for using excessive force, ruling that officers will be held to an objective standard about whether the use of force was reasonable.

The case, Kingsley v. Hendrickson, dealt with an excessive force claim filed by Michael Kingsley who was arrested on drug charges in Wisconsin in 2010. During a struggle with guards, Kingsley was tased for five seconds on the direction of Sergeant Stan Hendrickson.


Kingsley filed a suit claiming that the tasing was objectively unreasonable — an instance of “excessive force” in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause. The officers countered that the relevant standard is a subjective one, akin to whether the action constituted a “cruel and unusual punishment” in violation of the Eighth Amendment.

Initially, the jury found in favor of the officers who said that at the time they subjectively believed the force was necessary to control Kingsley. But Kingsley appealed and at oral arguments Wendy Ward, arguing on his behalf, warned of the consequences of instructing the jury to employ a subjective standard.

“[J]uries give a lot of deference to officers,” she said. “If [juries are] allowed to inject their subjective good faith…that would result in a lot more findings and verdicts in favor of guards, even in instances where objectively unreasonable, unjustified force is used.”

Justice Stephen Breyer, writing the majority opinion, agreed and said that an objective standard, set by the facts and circumstances of each case, should determine whether or not the force was excessive or necessitated by the circumstance. He added that jury instructions which ordered jurors to consider whether the guards “reasonably believed there was a threat to the safety of staff or prisoners” was “erroneous.”

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Clarence Thomas joined Justice Antonin Scalia in a dissent that said the “Constitution contains no freestanding prohibition of excessive force” but rather that such a prohibition stems from four other provisions. “[T]he intentional infliction of punishment upon a pretrial detainee may violate the Fourteenth Amendment,” which says that the accused are granted due process before being punished, “but the infliction of ‘objectively unreasonable’ force, without more, is not the intentional infliction of punishment.”

Scalia wrote that if he believed the tasing constituted punishment, he would agree that excessive force used would be unreasonable. But he said that the force in question in the case served the purpose of a goal of maintaining staff and inmate safety. He added, though, that Kingsley has other means outside of the U.S. Constitution of pursuing relief, noting that he had already brought a claim against the guards for assault and battery.