Could one justice's vote have saved Eric Garner? SCOTUS declined to enjoin chokeholds in 1983
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Did a 1983 Supreme Court decision on standing set the stage for the police chokehold that led to the death of cigarette suspect Eric Garner?
The decision, City of Los Angeles v. Lyons, is in the news after a grand jury’s decision not to indict the white New York police officer who put Garner, who is black, in a chokehold during his arrest for allegedly selling loose cigarettes. Think Progress and Mother Jones wrote about the 5-4 decision finding that Adolph Lyons had no standing to seek an injunction stopping the Los Angeles police department from using chokeholds.
“If one more justice had joined Marshall’s opinion,” Think Progress says, “any one of the people illegally choked by New York police could have sought an injunction preventing other people from being victimized. That may have been enough to save Eric Garner’s life.”
Although New York City had a policy against chokeholds since 1993, it has been ineffective, Think Progress says. An injunction would take decisions on how to enforce the ban out of the hands of police officials and into the hands of a judge with contempt authority.
In the Supreme Court case, Lyons, a black man, alleged that police stopped him in October 1976 for a broken taillight and put him in a chokehold without justification. In his dissent, Justice Thurgood Marshall described what happened to Lyons during the police stop.
“The officers greeted [Lyons] with drawn revolvers as he exited from his car,” Marshall wrote. “Lyons was told to face his car and spread his legs. He did so. He was then ordered to clasp his hands and put them on top of his head. He again complied. After one of the officers completed a patdown search, Lyons dropped his hands, but was ordered to place them back above his head, and one of the officers grabbed Lyons’ hands and slammed them onto his head. Lyons complained about the pain caused by the ring of keys he was holding in his hand. Within 5 to 10 seconds, the officer began to choke Lyons by applying a forearm against his throat. As Lyons struggled for air, the officer handcuffed him, but continued to apply the chokehold until he blacked out. When Lyons regained consciousness, he was lying face down on the ground, choking, gasping for air, and spitting up blood and dirt. He had urinated and defecated. He was issued a traffic citation and released.”
According to Marshall, 16 people had died since 1975 following the use of chokeholds by Los Angeles police officers. Twelve of them were black males.
“It is undisputed that chokeholds pose a high and unpredictable risk of serious injury or death. Chokeholds are intended to bring a subject under control by causing pain and rendering him unconscious,” Marshall wrote. “Depending on the position of the officer’s arm and the force applied, the victim’s voluntary or involuntary reaction, and his state of health, an officer may inadvertently crush the victim’s larynx, trachea, or hyoid. The result may be death caused by either cardiac arrest or asphyxiation. An LAPD officer described the reaction of a person to being choked as ‘do[ing] the chicken,’ … in reference apparently to the reactions of a chicken when its neck is wrung.”
A federal court had found the officer applied a chokehold that was authorized by the Los Angeles police department, even in situations without a risk of death or serious injury. After Lyons filed suit, the police chief said he was banning chokeholds, and police commissioners issued a six-month moratorium on chokeholds. Lyons asked the Supreme Court to dismiss the cert grant as improvidently granted because of the change in circumstances, but the court refused.
The majority said the issue was not moot, given the temporary nature of the moratorium. But the opinion found the court had no jurisdiction because Lyons did not have standing to seek an injunction.
The majority said that even if Lyons had standing to seek damages, his claim did not establish standing for an injunction, which requires a “real and immediate threat that he would again be stopped for a traffic violation, or for any other offense, by an officer or officers who would illegally choke him into unconsciousness without any provocation or resistance on his part.” To establish standing, the majority said, Lyons would have to establish the Los Angeles police always choke any citizen whom they encounter, or the department authorized or ordered officers to act in such a manner.
Marshall disagreed with the holding. “The court today holds that a federal court is without power to enjoin the enforcement of the city’s policy, no matter how flagrantly unconstitutional it may be. Since no one can show that he will be choked in the future, no one—not even a person who, like Lyons, has almost been choked to death—has standing to challenge the continuation of the policy,” he wrote.
Hat tip to the Marshall Project.
