Let’s Go to the Videotape!
on Apr 30, 2007 at 12:12 pm
In today’s Fourth Amendment decision about running a fleeing car off the road, there is a factual dispute about exactly what happened, and the Court notes that because the case is in a summary judgment posture, ordinarily it would accept the plainitiff’s version of the facts for purposes of the motion — except that in this case, there’s a videotape of the event, and the Court concludes that the videotape contradicts the version of the facts assumed by the plaintiff and the court of appeals. Justice Stevens argues that the videotape is sufficiently ambiguous such that a jury should be able to determine whether the deadly force it depicts was reasonable or not, but the Court isn’t buying it:
“We are happy to allow the videotape to speak for itself,” writes Justice Scalia — and then he provides a URL citation (http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/video/scott_v_harris.rmvb) for an upload of the videotape to the Supreme Court’s own website!
And Justice Breyer, concurring, writes: “Because watching the video footage of the car chase made a difference to my own view of the case, I suggest that the interested reader take advantage of the link in the CourtÂ’’s opinion, ante, at 5, n. 5, and watch it.” (It’s just short of sixteen minutes long.)
I assume this is a first. And I’m fairly confident the Court has never before written anything like the bolded sentence in this passage:
When opposing parties tell two different stories, one of which is blatantly contradicted by the record, so that no reasonable jury could believe it, a court should not adopt that version of the facts for purposes of ruling on a motion for summary judgment. That was the case here with regard to the factual issue whether respondent was driving in such fashion as to endanger human life. RespondentÂ’s version of events is so utterly discredited by the record that no reasonable jury could have believed him. The Court of Appeals should not have relied on such visible fiction; it should have viewed the facts in the light depicted by the videotape.
Justice Stevens has some fairly harsh words for his colleagues:
Relying on a de novo review of a videotape of a portion of a nighttime chase on a lightly traveled road in Georgia where no pedestrians or other “bystanders” were present, buttressed by uninformed speculation about the possible consequences of discontinuing the chase, eight of the jurors on this Court [!!] reach a verdict that differs from the views of the judges on both the District Court and the Court of Appeals who are surely more familiar with the hazards of driving on Georgia roads than we are.
This is my favorite part — Justice Stevens’s suggestion that his colleagues are simply too young to have a proper understanding of exactly what it is that they’re watching:
I can only conclude that my colleagues were unduly frightened by two or three images on the tape that looked like bursts of lightning or explosions, but were in fact merely the headlights of vehicles zooming by in the opposite lane. Had they learned to drive when most high-speed driving took place on two-lane roads rather than on super-highways — —when split-second judgments about the risk of passing a slowpoke in the face of oncoming traffic were routine— — they might well have reacted to the videotape more dispassionately.
Putting aside the disputed interpretation of the video in this particular case, what’ s more important is that it is only a matter of time, I think — perhaps decades, perhaps not so long — before legislatures begin to require that many more police activities, including most importantly interrogations, must be videotaped. And this will, I predict, have a profound impact on constitutional jurisprudence, and, more importantly, on police practices.
