Seattle Criminal Attorney | Arbitrary Tasing No Longer Allowed

At least in the 9th Circuit, after a decision there this week by the court of appeals. Reading through it, it is a great decision, and the moral of the story is this – you can’t tase people just because you want to, and using all of your “buzz words” to justify it won’t work.

To give you a little background on the decision, Carl Bryan was a 21 year old kid on his way home from somewhere. He’d already been pulled over once for speeding that morning, and was this time pulled over for not wearing his seat belt. He didn’t have a shirt on (he was using it to wipe his tears) and had only boxer shorts and shoes on. When the cop pulled him over, he asked him to stay in the car, but he got out.

Once he got out of the car he didn’t make any aggressive moves toward the cop. He didn’t shout at the cop, though the cop said he was talking gibberish. After a period of time passed, the cop pulled out his taser and shot the kid in the arm. 1200 volts of electricity went through his body, paralyzing him. He fell onto the road face first, knocking out four of his front teeth. Once of the taser prongs had to be removed with a scalpel.

The cop defended his actions by using the traditional cop buzzwords. He said he “feared for his safety,” and wanted to “diffuse the situation quickly.” The court didn’t buy it, finding that a person standing 20 feet away from the officer, with his back to the officer, with no weapons, could not create the type of reasonable fear that required the use of a taser.

This is just another example of the things I, as a Seattle criminal attorney, see every day. The cops learn some buzzwords, they know the court and everyone else is on their side because they have a tough job, and they take advantage of that to do whatever they want. At least for now, in the 9th Circuit, that is no longer the case.

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