Graham v. Connor
The Supreme Court ruled that claims of excessive force by police during an arrest, stop, or other seizure must be judged under the Fourth Amendment's 'objective reasonableness' standard, not a general substantive due process test.
The decision replaced a widely used four-factor test that asked about officers' good or bad intentions with a more focused inquiry into whether the force used was reasonable given the circumstances, regardless of what the officers were thinking.
How it got here: A federal trial court directed a verdict for the officers; the Fourth Circuit affirmed using a subjective four-factor test; Graham asked the Supreme Court to review the standard.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Dethorne Graham, a diabetic, asked a friend to drive him to a convenience store during an insulin reaction. When he hurried out of the store without buying anything, a police officer grew suspicious and stopped the car. Officers handcuffed Graham, ignored pleas that he needed sugar, and forcibly put him in a patrol car, causing him various injuries before releasing him once they learned he had done nothing wrong.
The question before the Court
When police are accused of using too much force during an arrest or stop, should courts judge that claim under the Fourth Amendment or under a general due-process fairness standard?
The Court's answer
The Fourth Amendment, not a general due-process fairness test. The Court held that whenever police are accused of using excessive force while making an arrest, investigatory stop, or other seizure of a free person, courts must ask whether the force was "objectively reasonable" under the Fourth Amendment — not whether officers acted with bad intent or in good faith.
This reasonableness inquiry looks at the situation from a reasonable officer's perspective at the time, weighing things like the severity of the suspected crime, whether the person seemed dangerous, and whether the person was resisting or fleeing. The officers' subjective motives, whether malicious or well-meaning, don't factor into whether the force used violated the Constitution.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
The ruling gives police officers, courts, and people who sue over police force a single, clearer legal yardstick for excessive-force claims arising from arrests and stops: was the force objectively reasonable given the situation, not whether the officer acted with bad motives. This affects how lower courts across the country evaluate the huge volume of police-force lawsuits filed each year.
What changes now
The case goes back to the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, which must reconsider the evidence of what happened to Graham using the Fourth Amendment's objective reasonableness standard instead of the discarded four-factor test. This is a final merits ruling on the legal standard to apply, though the ultimate outcome for Graham depends on how the lower courts apply that standard on remand.
What this does not decide
The Court left open whether the Fourth Amendment continues to protect a person against excessive force after arrest ends but before pretrial detention begins, and it did not address any qualified immunity defense, since neither issue was raised in this case.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence in part — Justice Blackmun
Justice Blackmun agreed that the Fourth Amendment governs this case and joined the remand, but objected that the Court did not need to broadly decide that all prearrest excessive-force claims must be analyzed only under the Fourth Amendment rather than substantive due process. He argued Tennessee v. Garner never addressed or rejected a due-process standard, and he would have left open the possibility of due-process claims in future cases where the issue is squarely raised.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court explained that a lawsuit under the federal civil rights law, 42 U.S.C. § 1983, does not create its own constitutional rights; a judge must first pin down which specific constitutional right is actually at stake before deciding what legal test applies.
- Because Graham's claim involved force used during an investigatory stop of a free citizen, the Court identified the Fourth Amendment's ban on unreasonable seizures — rather than the Eighth Amendment, which covers punishment of convicted prisoners — as the right actually at issue.
- The Court held that its earlier decision in Tennessee v. Garner, a case about deadly force used to stop a fleeing suspect, had already implicitly used a Fourth Amendment reasonableness approach, and made that approach explicit and mandatory for all prearrest excessive-force claims.
- Under this reasonableness standard, courts must weigh the intrusion on the person against the government's interest in making the arrest or stop, considering things like the severity of the suspected crime, whether the person seemed dangerous, and whether the person was resisting or fleeing — judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer at the scene, not with hindsight.
- The Court rejected the four-factor test used by the lower courts, which asked whether officers acted in 'good faith' or 'maliciously and sadistically,' because that test focused on officers' subjective motives, and subjective intent has no place in the objective reasonableness inquiry under the Fourth Amendment.
- Because the lower courts had evaluated Graham's claim under this incorrect subjective-motive test, the Court concluded that the judgment could not stand as decided and needed to be reevaluated under the correct objective standard.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms Tennessee v. Garner (471 U.S. 1)
The Court said Garner implicitly used a Fourth Amendment reasonableness test and made that approach explicit for all prearrest force claims.