Paralysis - the New Penalty for Speeding!

Today the Supreme Court handed down an opinion in an interesting Fourth Amendment case. In Scott v. Harris, Harris was the driver of a Cadillac in rural Georgia that was clocked going 73 MPH in a 55 zone. Once he was lit up by police, Harris chose to run rather than pull over and get a ticket.* The result was a several mile chase (which the Court put up on its website) along a two-lane highway that only ended when a pursuing officer rammed Harris's Caddy, which then crashed (hard), leaving Harris a quadriplegic. He sued under Federal civil rights laws, arguing that the cops violated his Fourth Amendment rights by performing an unreasonable seizure.

Not surprisingly, the Court ruled against Harris, 8-1, and found no Fourth Amendment violation. The Court's opinion, written by Justice Scalia, deemed Harris's chase as being equivalent to something out of a Hollywood movie (watch the vid - Bullitt it's not) putting numerous other drivers at risk. Indeed, Harris (and the pursuing officers) passed about a dozen cars during the chase. It's thus hard to have a lot of sympathy for Harris's self-inflicted situation.

Justice Stevens, however, disagrees and makes a compelling case in his dissent for why a jury, rather than a court, should resolve the issue of how dangerous the chase was (the lower appellate court ruled in favor of Harris). In the process, he makes a sort of "you damned kids!" statement in footnote 1, chiding his colleagues for not knowing how inherently dangerous two-lane roads can be, having grown up with Interstates and the like. Quite amusing, considering Scalia is no spring chicken himself!

* Presumably. There's nothing in the opinion or the briefs that indicate why Harris was so keen on running.