The supreme court justice said legal immunity ruling for Texas trooper Chadrin Mullenix amounted to supporting ‘shoot first, think later’ approach to policing

Supreme court justice Sonia Sotomayor accused her fellow justices of “sanctioning a shoot first, think later approach” after they overwhelmingly backed a police officer who ignored orders and shot a fleeing suspect in Texas.

Eight members of the nine-strong bench overturned a lower court ruling against trooper Chadrin Mullenix and found he was entitled to immunity from lawsuits. Legal experts say the ruling will probably make it harder to sue police in the future for using deadly force.

Mullenix was sued by the family of Israel Leija after he fired into Leija’s fleeing car despite having been told by a superior to wait for the vehicle to reach a series of tire spikes that had been set up nearby.

Leija, a 24-year-old from the rural town of Tulia, had sped off after being issued with a warrant for breaking the terms of his probation, but had threatened police that he would shoot if they did not call off an 18-minute car chase that reached speeds of up to 110mph.

“How’s that for proactive?” said Mullenix, after allegedly ignoring a request to wait and see if the spikes worked before attempting the unusual manouevre of stopping the speeding car by firing at it with his rifle from an overpass. Earlier, the trooper had been told in a counseling session that he was not enterprising enough.

“The comment seems to me revealing of the culture this court’s decision supports when it calls it reasonable – or even reasonably reasonable – to use deadly force for no discernible gain and over a supervisor’s express order to ‘stand by’,” wrote Sotomayor in her dissent.

“By sanctioning a ‘shoot first, think later’ approach to policing, the court renders the protections of the fourth amendment hollow,” she added.

Sotomayor argued instead that “any reasonable officer could not have thought that shooting would stop the car with less danger or greater certainty than waiting”, suggesting he should have waited to see if the tire spikes worked first.

Earlier, the fifth circuit court of appeals had agreed that Mullenix violated the rule that a police officer may not “use deadly force against a fleeing felon who does not pose a sufficient threat of harm to the officer or others”.

But the majority of the supreme court reversed the appellate court decision in a ruling published on Monday, arguing that although no gun had ever been found, Leija’s threat to use one meant the trooper was justified in believing there was a danger.

“In this case, Mullenix confronted a reportedly intoxicated fugitive, set on avoiding capture through high-speed vehicular flight, who twice during his flight had threatened to shoot police officers, and who was moments away from encountering an officer,” they wrote.



“When Mullenix fired, he reasonably understood Leija to be a fugitive fleeing arrest, at speeds over 100 miles per hour, who was armed and possibly intoxicated, who had threatened to kill any officer he saw if the police did not abandon their pursuit, and who was racing towards Officer Ducheneaux’s position.”

Antonin Scalia, viewed as the most conservative member of the bench, went further and wrote a separate judgement concurring with the majority and arguing that because the officer said he was trying to stop the car rather than kill its driver, it was wrong to treat it as a question of justifiable killing.

“Trooper Mullenix did not shoot to wound or kill the fleeing Leija, nor even to drive Leija’s car off the road, but only to cause the car to stop by destroying its engine,” wrote Scalia.

“It distorts that inquiry, I think, to make the question whether it was reasonable for Mullenix to ‘apply deadly force’.”