The Supreme Court ruled Monday that a Texas trooper who ended a high-speed police pursuit by fatally shooting the driver of the fleeing car deserves immunity.
Trooper Chadrin Lee Mullenix fired six shots from a bridge at the vehicle driven by Israel Leija Jr. on March 23, 2010 with the intent at disabling the car, according to The Courthouse News Service.
The 18-minute pursuit stretched through rural areas of I-27 at speeds between 80 and 100 mph after officers spotted Leija on arrest warrants stemming from a misdemeanor probation violation.
Four of the shots fired by the trooper struck the suspect, killing him.
While Leija was later found to be unarmed, officials said he had called the Tulia Police Dispatch twice from his cellphone during the chase, claiming that he had a gun and was prepared to shoot at officers if they did not back down.
An investigation by Texas Rangers and the Texas Department of Public Safety found that Mullenix was justified in the shooting and a grand jury declined to indict the trooper.
Leija's family filed the lawsuit and a federal judge left an excessive-force claim against Mullenix intact and refused to award the officer qualified immunity, claiming that shooting at the vehicle would not be a suitable way to disable it.
The Fifth Circuit Court affirmed the ruling last year, noting that any training the trooper received would not have included shooting at a moving vehicle to disable it. The court also found that spike strips were already set up in three locations ahead of the pursuit.
Mullenix petitioned the justices, who reversed the ruling, 8-1, for the officer.
"The fact is that when Mullenix fired, he reasonably understood Leija to be a fugitive fleeing arrest, at speeds over 100 miles per hour, who was armed and possibly intoxicated, who had threatened to kill any officer he saw if the police did not abandon their pursuit, and who was racing toward another officer," the unsigned ruling states.
