Police used excessive force when they fired Tasers at a pregnant woman in Seattle and a victim of domestic abuse in Maui, a federal appeals court ruled Monday in a case that could influence how police handle those resisting arrest across the West.
The ruling by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, sitting in a full 11-judge forum used to decide important questions of law, could prompt police forces to reexamine their rules and practices for the temporarily debilitating stun guns.
In the Seattle case, a seven-months pregnant Malaika Brooks was driving her son to school when she was stopped by police, ticketed for driving 12 miles over the 20-mph speed limit and blasted with a stun gun three times after refusing to sign the citation.
Two years later and thousands of miles away in Maui, Jayzel Mattos was trying to defuse a brewing clash between her drunk husband and four police officers called to a domestic disturbance when one of the officers suddenly dropped her to the floor with two jolts from his Taser, which was set in dart mode.
The federal appeals court ruled that in both instances, police used excessive force and that their actions violated the Constitution's protection from unreasonable force.
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Barry McDonald, a constitutional law professor at Pepperdine University, said the 9th Circuit ruling wouldn't be unduly restrictive for law enforcement because the circumstances in the two cases it reviewed were unusual and unlikely to be relevant in most instances when police decide to use stun guns.
"They took some pretty sympathetic factual scenarios to establish this law," said Laurie Levenson, a criminal law professor at Loyola Law School, noting Brooks' advanced pregnancy and the allegedly unprovoked stunning of Mattos.
The ruling should encourage police to better assess the threat level they confront and the severity of the offense for which a citizen is resisting arrest, said Levenson, describing the decision as "certainly not a case where the court says police can't use Tasers."