As new facts come to light about the interaction that led to Michael Brown's killing in Ferguson, a major question is whether the police officer, Darren Wilson, broke the law. As Peter Suderman
points out atReason (citing a tweet from Sean Davis of The Federalist), Missouri appears to have a very lax standard for the use of deadly force by officers:
A law enforcement officer in effecting an arrest or in preventing an escape from custody is justified in using deadly force only
(1) When such is authorized under other sections of this chapter; or
(2) When he reasonably believes that such use of deadly force is immediately necessary to effect the arrest and also reasonably believes that the person to be arrested
(a) Has committed or attempted to commit a felony; or
(b) Is attempting to escape by use of a deadly weapon; or
(.c) May otherwise endanger life or inflict serious physical injury unless arrested without delay.
4. The defendant shall have the burden of injecting the issue of justification under this section.
This is essentially the
"fleeing felon" rule that was widely used in the U.S. for many decades -- but the Supreme Court
struck it down in the mid-1980s. Now,
police officers are allowed to use deadly force against a fleeing felon only if they have reason to believe the felon is dangerous. Missouri may not have changed the text of its law to reflect the ruling, but the ruling still applies.
We can see how these cases actually play out in Missouri by looking at the officially approved jury instructions. Obnoxiously, the state
doesn't make those instructions available publicly for free, but
here's a citation of the relevant provision in a Springfield Police Department document:
A law enforcement officer is justified in using deadly force to effect an arrest and such use of deadly force is lawful if:
• First, the law enforcement officer is making or attempting to make a lawful arrest or what he reasonably believed to be a lawful arrest and the law enforcement officer reasonably believed that the use of force was necessary to effect the arrest or to prevent the escape of the offender, and
• Second, the law enforcement officer reasonably believed that the offender was attempting to escape by the use of a deadly weapon or would endanger life or inflict serious physical injury unless arrested without delay, and the law enforcement officer reasonably believed that the use of deadly force was immediately necessary to effect the arrest of the offender.Missouri Approved Jury Instructions-Criminal, 3rd Edition, 306.14 (based on Missouri Revised Statutes, Section 563.046 and Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1 (1985) (U.S. Supreme Court held that deadly force may not be used to arrest a fleeing unarmed suspected felon
unless it is necessary to prevent the escape and the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others).