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Supreme Court Seems Ready to Reject Limit on Excessive-Force Suits Against Police Officers

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Supreme Court Seems Ready to Reject Limit on Excessive-Force Suits Against Police Officers

The Supreme Court seemed poised on Wednesday to reject a legal theory that puts tight limits on lawsuits seeking to hold police officers accountable for using deadly force.

The case arose, an appeals court judge wrote, from a commonplace occurrence. “A routine traffic stop,” the judge wrote, “has again ended in the death of an unarmed Black man.”

The question for the justices was how closely courts should confine their consideration to “the moment of threat” rather than the larger context of the encounter.

There was something like consensus that the theory was focused too narrowly on the seconds preceding a shooting.

“Everybody agrees it’s wrong,” Justice Neil M. Gorsuch said. “What’s the harm of saying that?”

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The case started on an April afternoon in 2016, when Ashtian Barnes, 24, was driving on a highway outside Houston in a car his girlfriend had rented. He was on his way to pick up her daughter from day care.

Though Mr. Barnes did not know it, the car’s license plate was linked to unpaid tolls that had been incurred by another driver. Office Roberto Felix Jr. of the Harris County Constable’s Office pulled the car over based on those unpaid tolls.

When Mr. Barnes could not immediately locate his license and the car’s registration, the officer asked him to step out of the car. Instead, Mr. Barnes began to pull away, with the car door still open. Officer Felix drew his gun, jumped onto the moving car’s door sill and twice shot Mr. Barnes, as recorded on dash cam footage.

Ashtian Barnes was killed in a police shooting in 2016. He was unarmed.Credit…Adam Fomby, via Reuters

Mr. Barnes’s mother, Janice Hughes Barnes, sued, saying the officer’s use of force was unreasonable, violating the Fourth Amendment.

A unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled last year in favor of the officer on what it said was a narrow question. “We may only ask whether Officer Felix was in danger ‘at the moment of the threat’ that caused him to use deadly force against Barnes,” Judge Patrick E. Higginbotham wrote.

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Judge Higginbotham added a concurring opinion, writing only for himself. Had he been allowed to consider all of the circumstances surrounding the stop, he wrote, he could have ruled the other way.

“Given the rapid sequence of events and Officer Felix’s role in drawing his weapon and jumping on the running board,” the judge wrote, “the totality of the circumstances merits finding that Officer Felix violated Barnes’s Fourth Amendment right to be free from excessive force.”

At Wednesday’s argument in the case, Barnes v. Felix, No. 23-1239, some justices expressed concerns about second-guessing police officers’ split-second judgments. “An officer does not get the time we’ve spent here today to make the decision,” Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh said.

But most of the justices seemed inclined to allow the court to consider more than the seconds before the shooting.

“Would you be satisfied,” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. asked a lawyer for Ms. Barnes, “with a narrow holding that it is wrong for a court to look just at the moment of the threat?”

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The lawyer, Nathaniel A.G. Zelinsky, said he would, though he added that “it would be helpful if the court makes clear that that means that you can look at the jump in addition to the shoot.”

Charles L. McCloud, a lawyer for Officer Felix, said the court should narrow its focus to the moment he used force. “He was clinging to the side of a fleeing suspect’s car, and Felix reasonably believed that his life was in imminent danger,” Mr. McCloud said. “That conclusion should end this case.”

In rebuttal, Mr. Zelinsky disagreed. “You have to look at the whole picture,” he said, “and here that’s more than just two seconds.”

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Trump fires last members of election commission, inciting fears of midterm ‘chaos’

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Trump fires last members of election commission, inciting fears of midterm ‘chaos’

Donald Trump has terminated the remaining members of the independent, federal commission that assists election administration officials nationwide just a few months before the midterm elections, multiple outlets reported Thursday.

The remaining three commissioners of the four-member bipartisan commission ⁠were forced out on Thursday in different ways. The one Republican appointee resigned and the other ⁠two, Democratic appointees were notified of their terminations via email from ​the White House presidential personnel office.

“On ‌behalf of President ‌Donald J Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position ‌as Commissioner of the Election Assistance Commission is terminated, effective immediately. Thank you for your service,” the email, seen by Reuters, said.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Election Assistance Commission serves as a “national clearinghouse of information on election ‌administration”, accredits testing laboratories and certifies voting systems, and maintains the national mail-voter registration form developed by the National ​Voter Registration Act of 1993, according to the commission’s website. The terminations follow Trump and top administration officials’ advocacy to change vote-by-mail requirements and investigations into the 2020 election outcome, which Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

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“It is ⁠irresponsible and dangerous that this Administration remains dead set on ​causing chaos for ​our election officials across this ​country,” Arizona secretary of state Adrian Fontes said in a ​Thursday statement. “This ‌move undermines the integrity ​of nonpartisan ​election administration.”

The 2002 law that established the commission, the Help America Vote Act, states the president can appoint replacements to the commission.

It is unclear how Trump will move ahead with the commission.

Reuters contributed reporting

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Former Olympian pleads not guilty in reflecting pool vandalism charges

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Former Olympian pleads not guilty in reflecting pool vandalism charges

Former U.S. Olympian David Hearn (left) walks with his attorney Norman Eisen to speak to reporters and protesters gathered after his arraignment at the Superior Court of the District of Columbia in Washington, D.C. on Thursday.

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Former U.S. Olympic canoeist David Hearn pleaded not guilty to damaging the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in D.C. Superior Court Thursday morning.

Federal prosecutors charged Hearn with a single count of destruction of property causing more than $1,000 in damage to the pool.

Hearn has previously claimed, which his attorneys repeated during a short press conference outside the court, that he simply touched the water in the pool out of curiosity.

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The Trump administration had just completed a $14 million renovation of the pool.

But shortly after the work finished, peeling paint and algae gathered in the water. The remodel has been largely criticized as a massive failure and waste of taxpayer dollars.

Superior Court Judge Carmen McLean released Hearn on his own recognizance. His next hearing is scheduled for Aug. 5.

Norm Eisen, one of Hearn’s attorneys, spoke to reporters outside of court following the hearing. He said the administration is using Hearn as a “scapegoat … for their own failures.”

“It is not a crime to touch the reflecting pool, to touch water in the United States of America,” he said.

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Prosecutors say there is a host of evidence against Hearn.

This is a developing story.

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Three more people charged with damaging Reflecting Pool after Trump’s multimillion-dollar restoration | CNN Politics

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Three more people charged with damaging Reflecting Pool after Trump’s multimillion-dollar restoration | CNN Politics

Three more people have been criminally charged with destruction of property at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

Officers say they detained Cameron Thiers, Sophie Dennison-Gibby and Justin Carreno one Saturday afternoon in June and described in court documents witnessing them peeling and removing pieces of blue paint from the Reflecting Pool.

One officer “witnessed Carreno reach down into the reflecting pool and pull up a piece of the blue paint,” according to the court documents.

The officer who detained Dennison-Gibby “found 1 additional piece of the reflecting pool liner” in her purse, the documents said.

All three incidents were recorded on the officers’ body worn cameras, they said in the court documents.

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Several “partnering law enforcement agencies assigned to the Reflecting Pool” working with US Park Police were involved in detaining the two men and one woman — including officers from Texas, Oklahoma, Montana and California.

One of the officers said in court documents that Thiers “admitted to removing a piece of blue sealant from the Reflecting Pool and still had it in his hand when I made contact with him.”

The three defendants were arraigned in court Wednesday and pleaded not guilty to the misdemeanor charges of destruction of property with a value less than $1,000. The judge ordered them to stay away from the Reflecting Pool.

Lawyers for Thiers and Dennison-Gibby declined to comment. CNN has reached out to Carreno’s attorney.

If found guilty of destruction of property, the defendants could be fined up to $1,000 and face a maximum of 180 days behind bars.

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The New York Times first reported that three additional people had been charged with damaging the Reflecting Pool.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that vandals caused major damage to the pool by gashing the lining after his administration spent more than $14 million on renovations, though he has not provided evidence to support that claim. The officers who charged Carreno, Thiers and Dennison-Gibby did not accuse them of gashing the lining.

Former Olympic canoeist David Hearn was indicted by a grand jury in Washington, DC, last week for allegedly damaging the Reflecting Pool. Hearn — unlike Carreno, Thiers and Dennison-Gibby – was charged with destruction of property with a value of more than $1,000 which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison, if convicted. He is set to be arraigned in court Thursday.

Crews began draining the Reflecting Pool over the weekend to make repairs, according to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, for the second time in three months.

The move comes after weeks of problems – algae blooms, green-hued water, a chipping bottom and the administration’s allegations of vandalism – that have plagued the iconic landmark, making its woes the subject of national interest.

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