The U.S. Supreme Court Monday granted immunity to a police officer who shot a mentally ill woman outside her home in 2010, prompting a fervent dissent from Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
The justice said Monday’s decision keeps with a “disturbing trend” in which the high court continuously shields serious police misconduct from civil liability.
“Its decision is not just wrong on the law; it also sends an alarming signal to law enforcement officers and the public,” she wrote. “It tells officers that they can shoot first and think later, and it tells the public that palpably unreasonable conduct will go unpunished.”
The case was occasioned in 2010 when University of Arizona police officer Andrew Kisela responded to a “check welfare” call, after a neighbor called 911 to report a woman brandishing a knife was behaving erratically and hacking at a tree. Kisela and two other officers arrived at the scene to find the woman, Amy Hughes, emerging from her home with a knife in her hand. She was approaching her roommate, Sharon Chadwick, who was standing in the driveway. – READ MORE
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