Summary
Federal Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals case to review lower court decisions that would allow Dorian Johnson, the 22-year-old companion of Michael Brown, to sue the city and Officer Darren Wilson for violating his rights. In August 2014, Officer Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown, who had just robbed a convenience store when Officer Wilson saw the pair walking down the middle of a street in Ferguson, Missouri. Johnson claims that when Officer Wilson ordered them to the sidewalk, he had unlawfully seized him in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Although both federal and grand jury investigations of the incident found that Johnson had lied about the events leading up to the shooting and the shooting itself, motions to dismiss the lawsuit have been rejected by the federal district court and a divided Eighth Circuit panel. When the circuit agreed to reconsider the panel's ruling en banc, CJLF joined the case on behalf of the National Police Association arguing that by Johnson's own admission he was not ordered to stop or prevented from leaving, which he did when he eventually ran. Citing its 1991 U. S. Supreme Court victory in California v. Hodari D., CJLF argued that the facts Johnson describes, of his encounter in the middle of the street with Officer Wilson, do not constitute a seizure. Because of this, the lawsuit should be dismissed. The Court of Appeals agreed.
