Wikipedia Deep Dive

Graham v. Connor

13 min read

The Orange Juice That Changed American Policing

Dethorne Graham just needed some orange juice. He was a diabetic experiencing an insulin reaction—that terrifying feeling when your blood sugar crashes and your body screams for glucose. His friend drove him to a convenience store in Charlotte, North Carolina. Graham rushed inside, saw the line was too long, and walked right back out. He didn't have time to wait. His body was failing him.

That split-second decision—entering a store and leaving without buying anything—would eventually reshape how American courts evaluate every police use of force case for decades to come.

A nearby officer named Connor watched Graham's behavior and grew suspicious. Why would someone hurry into a store and immediately leave? Connor pulled over Graham's friend's car for what's called an investigative stop—the legal authority police have to briefly detain someone when they reasonably suspect criminal activity.

What happened next was chaos.

Graham's friend tried to explain: it was just a sugar reaction, nothing more. But Connor ordered Graham to wait while he checked with the store. As Graham's condition deteriorated, he got out of the car, ran around it twice in confusion, and collapsed on the curb. When backup officers arrived, one of them rolled Graham over on the sidewalk and handcuffed his hands tightly behind his back. Graham's friend begged them to get him some sugar. They ignored him.

Eventually, the convenience store confirmed what should have been obvious from the start: Graham hadn't done anything wrong. He was released.

But by then, the damage was done. Graham left that encounter with a broken foot, cuts on his wrists, a bruised forehead, and an injured shoulder. All because he needed orange juice.

The Question Nobody Could Answer

When Graham sued the officers, claiming they had used excessive force, the courts faced a surprisingly difficult question: How exactly should judges and juries evaluate whether police used too much force?

This might seem obvious. Either the force was reasonable or it wasn't, right?

But the American legal system doesn't work on gut feelings. Courts need frameworks—specific tests and standards that can be applied consistently across thousands of different cases with wildly different circumstances. A scuffle during a traffic stop is different from a high-speed chase. An encounter with an armed suspect is different from an encounter with someone having a medical emergency.

Before Graham's case reached the Supreme Court in 1989, different courts used different approaches. Some focused on the officer's intentions. Did the officer mean to cause harm? Was there malice involved? Others applied what's called "substantive due process"—a legal doctrine rooted in the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee that the government cannot deprive anyone of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.

Judge Henry Friendly, a highly respected jurist on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, had developed a four-part test based on an earlier Supreme Court case called Rochin v. California. That case involved police officers who literally pumped a suspect's stomach to retrieve evidence he had swallowed—conduct so shocking that the Court said it "shocks the conscience" and violates basic principles of justice.

But the Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, saw a problem with all these approaches. They were looking in the wrong part of the Constitution.

Finding the Right Constitutional Home

The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution protects against "unreasonable searches and seizures." When police arrest you, stop you on the street, or physically restrain you in any way, they are "seizing" your person in the constitutional sense. The Founders included this protection because they remembered British soldiers entering colonial homes at will, searching property without justification, and arresting people on the king's whim.

Chief Justice Rehnquist's opinion made a point that would prove crucial: when the Constitution provides a specific, explicit protection for something, courts shouldn't use vaguer, more general provisions instead. The Fourth Amendment directly addresses government seizures of people. It directly addresses the question of whether those seizures are "reasonable." Why would courts use the more abstract concept of "due process" when there's already a constitutional provision specifically designed for this situation?

This wasn't just legal housekeeping. The choice of constitutional provision matters enormously because different provisions come with different standards and different burdens of proof.

And so the Supreme Court announced a new framework: all excessive force claims arising from arrests, investigative stops, or other seizures of a person must be analyzed under the Fourth Amendment's standard of "objective reasonableness."

What "Objective Reasonableness" Actually Means

The word "objective" is doing a lot of work in this standard. It means the court doesn't care what the officer was thinking or feeling. It doesn't matter if the officer was angry, scared, prejudiced, or perfectly calm. The only question is whether the officer's actions were objectively reasonable given the circumstances.

Think of it this way: imagine a hypothetical "reasonable officer"—someone with similar training and experience—placed in the exact same situation, knowing only what the actual officer knew at the time. Would that hypothetical officer have acted similarly?

This approach has a crucial implication that the Court stated explicitly: you cannot judge an officer's actions "with the 20/20 vision of hindsight." You must evaluate the situation from the perspective of the officer on the scene, at the moment decisions were made, with incomplete information and perhaps only seconds to act.

The Court acknowledged that this standard "is not capable of precise definition or mechanical application." It requires "careful attention to the facts and circumstances of each particular case." But they did offer some guideposts—factors that courts should consider:

The severity of the crime at issue. Is the officer dealing with a violent felony or a minor infraction?
Whether the suspect poses an immediate threat to the safety of officers or others.
Whether the suspect is actively resisting arrest or attempting to flee.

The Court emphasized that this list isn't exhaustive. Other factors might matter in particular cases. But these three considerations form the core of what has become known as the "Graham factors."

The Balance at the Heart of the Fourth Amendment

There's a tension built into the Fourth Amendment that the Court had to address. On one hand, the Constitution protects individuals from unreasonable government intrusion. On the other hand, police cannot do their jobs without sometimes using force.

The Court acknowledged this directly: "the right to make an arrest or investigatory stop necessarily carries with it the right to use some degree of physical coercion or threat thereof to effect it." In other words, if we want police to be able to arrest dangerous criminals, we have to accept that this will sometimes require physical force.

The question is always one of balance. Courts must weigh "the nature and quality of the intrusion on the individual's Fourth Amendment interests against the countervailing governmental interests at stake." How serious was the intrusion on the person's liberty and physical safety? How important was the government's reason for using that force?

This balancing test creates space for police to use significant force when genuinely necessary—like when confronting an armed suspect who poses an immediate threat—while still providing constitutional protection against force that's disproportionate to the situation.

What Happened to Dethorne Graham's Case?

After establishing this new framework, the Supreme Court didn't actually decide whether the officers had used excessive force against Graham. Instead, they sent the case back to the lower courts with instructions to reconsider it using the correct Fourth Amendment standard.

The Court noted that the Court of Appeals had focused on the officers' subjective motivations—what they were thinking and intending—rather than on whether they had used an objectively unreasonable amount of force. That was the wrong approach under the new framework.

This might seem like a technicality, but it mattered. Under the subjective approach, Graham would have had to prove that the officers acted with bad intentions. Under the objective approach, he only had to prove that their actions were unreasonable—regardless of what they were thinking.

A Framework for Decades of Controversy

Graham v. Connor was decided in 1989. In the decades since, it has become the controlling precedent in virtually every case where someone claims police used excessive force. The framework applies whether the person survived the encounter or was killed.

The case's influence is hard to overstate. When you hear about a police shooting being deemed "justified" or an officer being acquitted of excessive force charges, the Graham standard is almost certainly involved. The jury is being asked: would a reasonable officer, facing the same circumstances and knowing only what this officer knew, have acted similarly?

Consider some of the high-profile cases where Graham v. Connor provided the legal framework:

Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Jonathan Ferrell in Charlotte (the same city where Graham was injured). John Crawford III in an Ohio Walmart. Samuel DuBose in Cincinnati. Jamar Clark in Minneapolis. Keith Lamont Scott, also in Charlotte. Terence Crutcher in Tulsa. Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge. Philando Castile in a Minnesota suburb.

In most of these cases, the officers' actions were deemed to satisfy the reasonableness test. The officers were not charged or were acquitted.

Perhaps most notably, Graham v. Connor was cited repeatedly by both prosecution and defense in the trial of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Professor Seth Stoughton of the University of South Carolina, serving as a prosecution expert, compiled a hundred-page report analyzing how the Graham standard applied to Chauvin's conduct.

The Debate That Won't End

Police industry publications generally praise the Graham framework. They argue it recognizes the genuine dangers of police work and protects officers' ability to do their jobs without second-guessing every split-second decision. From this perspective, the standard appropriately accounts for the fact that officers often must make life-or-death choices with incomplete information and no time for deliberation.

Critics see it very differently. They argue the framework is structurally tilted toward acquittal. By forbidding hindsight—by requiring juries to ignore what we now know and evaluate only what the officer believed at the time—the standard makes it extremely difficult to hold officers accountable even when their beliefs turn out to be completely wrong.

The "reasonable officer" standard also raises troubling questions about implicit bias. If officers are trained in ways that embed racial stereotypes—if police culture leads officers to perceive Black men as more threatening than white men in identical situations—then the "reasonable officer" standard might simply replicate and legitimize those biases. A truly reasonable officer might share the biases prevalent in police culture, making those biases part of the legal definition of reasonableness.

There's also the question of what counts as a "split-second decision." Critics note that officers often make choices that create the dangerous situations requiring split-second decisions. An officer who rushes toward a suspect with a gun, rather than taking cover and calling for backup, has made choices that narrow their subsequent options. Should the reasonableness analysis focus only on the final moment, or should it consider the entire tactical approach?

The Difference Between Constitutionality and Justice

There's a distinction worth understanding here that often gets lost in public debate. Graham v. Connor establishes when police use of force violates the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. It doesn't necessarily define when force is morally right, tactically wise, or consistent with good policing practices.

An officer's use of force can be constitutional under Graham while still being:

A violation of departmental policy
Contrary to police training best practices
Morally questionable
A sign of poor judgment that should result in termination

The Constitution sets a floor, not a ceiling. It defines the minimum that officers must meet to avoid violating constitutional rights. Police departments, state laws, and ethical standards can and do set higher bars.

This distinction matters because public outrage often centers on cases where force was deemed constitutional but still seems deeply wrong. Understanding Graham v. Connor helps explain how both things can be true simultaneously. The framework permits some uses of force that many people find unjust—and whether that's a feature or a bug depends largely on your perspective about the balance between police authority and individual rights.

A Related Precedent: When Police Can Use Deadly Force

Graham v. Connor is often discussed alongside another Supreme Court case: Tennessee v. Garner, decided in 1985. That case specifically addressed when police can use deadly force—force intended or likely to kill.

Tennessee v. Garner held that police cannot use deadly force simply to prevent a suspect from escaping. They can only use it when the officer has probable cause to believe the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others. This means, for example, that an officer generally cannot shoot a fleeing shoplifter in the back, but might be justified in shooting a fleeing murder suspect believed to be armed.

Together, Graham and Tennessee v. Garner form the core constitutional framework for police use of force in America. Tennessee v. Garner sets limits on when deadly force can be used at all; Graham v. Connor provides the reasonableness standard for evaluating whether the force actually used was excessive.

The Legacy of Orange Juice

Dethorne Graham just needed orange juice. He was having a medical emergency, did nothing wrong, and ended up with a broken foot and other injuries for his trouble. His case became a vehicle for the Supreme Court to answer a question that would shape American law enforcement for generations.

Whether the Graham standard strikes the right balance—whether it properly weighs individual rights against police authority, whether it adequately accounts for bias and tactical choices, whether it achieves justice in the individual cases where it's applied—remains fiercely contested more than three decades later.

What's clear is that any serious conversation about police use of force in America runs through this case. The framework announced in Graham v. Connor isn't just legal doctrine; it's the lens through which our society evaluates thousands of encounters between police and citizens every year. It shapes how officers are trained, how prosecutors make charging decisions, how juries deliberate, and ultimately how we define the boundary between lawful authority and unconstitutional violence.

For Dethorne Graham, seeking relief for an insulin reaction, that boundary was crossed on a Charlotte sidewalk. The Supreme Court agreed that he deserved his day in court under the proper constitutional standard. But the standard they created has, for many people harmed by police, proven to be a formidable barrier rather than a path to justice.

That tension—between protecting police officers' ability to do dangerous work and protecting individuals from excessive state violence—is built into the Graham framework. It's a tension that American society continues to wrestle with, case by case, death by death, in courtrooms and streets across the country.