Portales attorney claims win in Supreme Court case

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled in the favor of a Portales attorney’s client Thursday, with a divided ruling on Torres vs. Madrid.

By a 5-3 ruling, the court reversed the decision of the Tenth Circuit and concluded that New Mexico State Police Officers Janice Madrid and Richard Williamson seized Albuquerque resident Roxanne Torres — a client of Portales’ Eric Dixon — even though she fled, and that she was within her right to seek damages from them in court.

Dixon, in a Friday release from his office, called the opinion groundbreaking.

“It has been a long fight for justice,” Dixon said, “and (I) will continue to fight to make government actors accountable for their actions.”

According to the ruling:

• In July 2014, officers approached Torres at an Albuquerque apartment complex, and spoke with her as she got into the driver’s seat of her Toyota FJ Cruiser. The officers were at the apartment complex to execute an arrest warrant for white collar crimes, but they suspected her involvement in other more serious offenses. Torres was not the target of the warrant.

• Believing the officers to be carjackers, Torres drove off. The majority opinion notes details of the interaction were hotly disputed, and the court made a narrow ruling based on an interpretation of the facts most favorable to Torres.

• Officers fired 13 shots, with two hitting Torres. Torres asked a bystander to report an attempted carjacking, then stole a Kia Soul and drove to a hospital in Grants. She was airlifted back to an Albuquerque hospital and arrested the next day, and later pleaded no contest to charges of aggravated fleeing from a law enforcement officer, assault on a peace officer and unlawfully taking a motor vehicle.

• Torres sought damages against the officers two years later, claiming the force used against her was excessive and constituted an unreasonable seizure under the Fourth Amendment. The circuit court disagreed, holding that, “a suspect’s continued flight after being shot by police negates a Fourth Amendment excessive-force claim.”

• The majority opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts concluded that by applying case law “to the facts viewed in the light most favorable to Torres, the officers’ shooting applied physical force to her body and objectively manifested an intent to restrain her from driving away.

“We therefore conclude that the officers seized Torres for the instant that the bullets struck her.”

• Joining Roberts in the majority decision were justices Stephen Breyer, Brett Kavanaugh, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. Justice Amy Coney Barnett, who was confirmed to the court nearly two weeks after the case was argued, did not participate in the ruling.

• Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the dissenting opinion, and was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. The dissenting opinion claimed the majority resorted to a “schizophrenic reading of the word ‘seizure’” and used a “selective snippet from Webster’s Dictionary and a hypothetical about a purse snatching” in place of precedent or historical analysis.

Torres’ civil rights claim against the officers may proceed, but the majority notes she will have to show the seizure was unreasonable and the officers were not entitled to qualified immunity.