County Of Sacramento v. Lewis

The Supreme Court first noted that the Fourth Amendment’s “objective reasonableness” test was inapplicable in this case, because no “seizure” had taken place. A police pursuit in attempting to seize a person does not amount to a “seizure” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. Similarly, no Fourth Amendment seizure would take place where a pursuing police car sought to stop the suspect only by the show of authority represented by flashing lights and continuing pursuit, but accidentally stopped the suspect by crashing into him. A Fourth Amendment “seizure” occurs only when there is a governmental termination of freedom of movement through means intentionally applied.

Substantive due process claims protect the individual against arbitrary action of government officials. The Court has repeatedly recognized the “shocks the conscience” standard as appropriate in due process cases, and found it applicable here. In pursuit cases, a police officer deciding whether to give chase must balance on one hand the need to stop a suspect, and, on the other, the high-speed threat to all persons within the pursuit range. Accordingly, the Court held that high-speed chases with no intent to harm suspects do not give rise to liability under the Fourteenth Amendment.

Here, the officer was faced with a course of lawless behavior for which the police were not to blame. They had done nothing to cause the motorcycle operator’s high-speed driving in the first place, nothing to excuse his flouting of the commonly understood law enforcement authority to control traffic, and nothing (beyond a refusal to call off the chase) to encourage him to race through traffic at excessive speeds. While prudence would have repressed the officer’s response, the officer’s instinct was to do his job as a law enforcement officer.