The Supreme Court Closes a Police Shooting Loophole

In 2014, two New Mexico police officers fired 13 shots at Roxanne Torres as she tried to drive away from them. Two bullets hit her in the back, though they didn’t stop her; Torres kept driving, eventually reaching a hospital. The Supreme Court has long held shooting a fleeing suspect counts as a “seizure” of the person under the Fourth Amendment. So Torres sued—but a federal appeals court threw out her case, holding that the officers couldn’t have “seized” her because she still fled the scene. She appealed, asking the Supreme Court: Does the victim of a police shooting really lack constitutional recourse if she happens to be lucky enough to escape?

On Thursday, the Supreme Court answered this question with a resounding “no.” Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority opinion in Torres v. Madrid closes an alarming loophole that lower courts had carved into the Constitution, clarifying that the Fourth Amendment prohibits “unreasonable” police shootings even if a wounded suspect still flees the scene. The 5–3 decision won’t stop the epidemic of police shootings in the United States, where law enforcement kills civilians at exponentially higher rates than in peer nations. But it will give victims and their families a better shot at winning some semblance of justice in the federal courts.