A ruling by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals suggests it’s wrong for a person involved in an auto accident to draw a gun, point it at the head of the other driver and order him to lie on the ground.
Even if the first person is an off-duty cop. And it was his car that also was in the accident.
The decision comes in a case brought by Logan Vanderhoef against Maurice Kelly Dixon in Tennessee.
The appeals court opinion, written by Judge Richard Griffin, recounted the incident in which Vanderhoef crashed his Ford Mustang into Dixon’s vehicle.
“Dixon, an off-duty, part-time reserve police officer, responded by holding Vanderhoef and his passengers at gunpoint for about two minutes.”
The district court jury ruled, in the case handled by Van Irion of Irion law, that Dixon violated Vanderhoef’s Fourth Amendment rights by doing that.
But the judge there claimed that Dixon was entitled to “qualified immunity because no clearly established law put him on notice that doing what he did was unconstitutional.”
It happened in 2016.
After the crash, Dixon “got out of his vehicle holding his personal handgun and approached plaintiff’s car in a hurry. The Mustang’s airbags had deployed in the collision, and all three occupants were trying to exit the vehicle as the defendant approached. With his gun drawn, defendant began directing the three teenagers out of the car by repeatedly yelling, ‘Let me see your hands, get on the ground.’ Defendant pointed the gun at plaintiff’s head the whole time he was giving these orders.
“All three teenage occupants of the car complied and got on the ground outside the vehicle. Dixon held them at gunpoint for roughly two minutes.”
The scenario comes from an independent witness who tried to intervene, telling Dixon: “You need to calm down. You need to put that gun away.”
His response to her was: “Shut up, mind your own business, and get back in your car.”
The witness, Martha Keller, eventually called police, during which time Dixon put his gun away.
The opinion explained qualified immunity “protects government officials from liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.”
It’s clear the actions violated Vanderhoef’s fourth Amendment right to be free from excessive forces and unreasonable seizure, the ruling said.
And should the officer have known?
“Our precedent, as well as that of other courts in this circuit and our sister circuits, establishes that, without additional provocation, a plain-clothes officer may not hold at gunpoint an unarmed citizen suspected of a mere traffic violation.”
The court ruled: “At the time of this accident and confrontation defendant should have known that pointing his gun at plaintiff – a nonfleeing teenager whom he did not reasonably suspect of any prior crime beyond speeding and reckless driving – and holding him at gunpoint for roughly two minutes, violated plaintiff’s Fourth Amendment rights.”
The jury had awarded the teen driver $500 damages on each of three counts, and the appeals court returned the case to the lower court for “judgment consistent with the jury’s verdict.”
