Wikipedia Deep Dive

Tennessee v. Garner

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A fifteen-year-old boy climbed a chain-link fence in Memphis, Tennessee, on an October night in 1974. A police officer shot him in the back of the head. The boy died with ten dollars and a stolen purse in his pocket.

This killing was entirely legal under Tennessee law at the time. And that fact would eventually force the United States Supreme Court to answer a question that seems obvious in hindsight but had never been clearly resolved: When, exactly, can police officers kill people who are running away?

The Night Everything Changed

Edward Garner was not a hardened criminal. He was a teenager who had broken into a house and stolen a small amount of money. When Officers Leslie Wright and Elton Hymon responded to the burglary call that night, Hymon went around to the back of the house and spotted Garner fleeing across the yard.

What happened next unfolded in seconds but would echo through American law for decades.

Garner reached a six-foot chain-link fence. Officer Hymon shined his flashlight on the boy and could clearly see his face and hands. Hymon was, in his own words, "reasonably sure" that Garner was unarmed. He called out "police, halt." Garner started climbing the fence anyway.

Hymon faced a choice. He could let an unarmed teenager escape over a fence after stealing ten dollars. Or he could shoot him.

He shot him.

The bullet entered the back of Garner's head. He died shortly after reaching the hospital. Under the laws of Tennessee, Officer Hymon had done nothing wrong. A state statute explicitly authorized officers to use "all the necessary means to effect the arrest" of any fleeing suspect who refused to stop after being warned. This wasn't a rogue cop acting outside the rules. This was the rules working exactly as written.

An Ancient Principle Meets Modern America

Tennessee's law wasn't unusual. It reflected a legal doctrine stretching back centuries to English common law, the body of legal principles developed by courts in England over hundreds of years that formed the foundation of American law.

Under the old common law rule, officers could use deadly force against any fleeing felon. Period. The logic made a certain brutal sense in medieval England. Felonies were rare and almost all of them carried the death penalty anyway. If you were fleeing from an accusation of murder, robbery, or burglary, the state was going to kill you eventually. Killing you during the chase just saved everyone some time.

But American law in 1974 looked nothing like medieval English law. The list of felonies had expanded dramatically. Tax evasion, drug possession, various fraud schemes—the modern criminal code created felonies that didn't exist at common law and certainly didn't carry death sentences. More importantly, the old rule developed before the invention of firearms. When the common law authorized deadly force, it meant swords and clubs, not guns that could kill from a distance in an instant.

The context had changed completely. The rule had not.

The Constitutional Question

Edward Garner's father sued. He brought his case under a federal law called Section 1983, part of the Civil Rights Act of 1871. This statute, passed during Reconstruction to protect newly freed Black Americans from abuse by state officials, allows citizens to sue government actors who violate their constitutional rights.

The question was whether shooting a fleeing, unarmed suspect violated the Fourth Amendment. That amendment protects against "unreasonable searches and seizures." A search is when the government looks through your stuff. A seizure is when the government takes control of your person or property.

Is shooting someone a seizure?

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals said yes. When a police officer fires a bullet into your body, they have definitively seized you. You are not going anywhere. The question then becomes whether that seizure was reasonable.

The Supreme Court Weighs In

Justice Byron White wrote the opinion for the Supreme Court's majority in 1985. His analysis was methodical but led to a conclusion that should have surprised no one: shooting an unarmed, non-dangerous fleeing suspect is unconstitutional.

White's reasoning balanced two competing interests. On one side sat the suspect's interest in not being killed. As White dryly noted, "The suspect's fundamental interest in his own life need not be elaborated upon." On the other side sat the government's interest in catching criminals.

Tennessee argued that its interest in preventing escape justified the shooting. White was unconvinced. The state presented no evidence that shooting unarmed fleeing suspects actually served any meaningful law enforcement purpose. It didn't deter crime. It didn't protect the public. It just killed people who might otherwise have been captured, tried, and given an appropriate sentence.

The Court established what became known as the Garner rule: police may not use deadly force to prevent escape unless the officer has probable cause to believe the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others.

In other words, you can shoot someone who's running away if you have good reason to believe they'll kill or seriously hurt someone if they escape. You cannot shoot someone simply because they're running.

The Dissent's Concerns

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote a dissent that highlighted the practical difficulties police officers face. Cops don't have the luxury of calm deliberation. They make split-second decisions in chaotic, dangerous situations. O'Connor worried that the majority's rule would hamstring officers in the field.

She also pointed out that burglary isn't a trivial crime. Someone who breaks into an occupied home might be willing to commit robbery or assault. The Tennessee legislature had made a judgment that such criminals posed enough danger to justify deadly force when fleeing. O'Connor thought the Court should have deferred to that legislative judgment.

But her dissent did not carry the day. The majority held firm: Edward Garner's constitutional rights had been violated when Officer Hymon shot him in the back of the head for climbing a fence.

What Actually Changed

Legal scholars have studied the Garner decision's real-world effects, and the results are striking. One study found a sixteen percent reduction in police homicides after the ruling. The drop was even more pronounced in states where existing deadly force laws had to be rewritten to comply with the new constitutional standard.

This matters because there was genuine skepticism about whether Supreme Court rulings could actually change police behavior. Cops operate on the street, far from courtrooms, making instantaneous decisions. Would a legal opinion from nine justices in Washington really affect what happened in the dark moments when officers confronted fleeing suspects?

The evidence suggests it did. Not just by preventing shootings of fleeing suspects specifically, but by creating a general culture of restraint around deadly force.

The Limits of Change

Yet the Garner decision's legacy is more complicated than a simple victory for civil rights. Four years later, in a case called Graham versus Connor, the Supreme Court established how courts should evaluate police use of force generally. The standard requires judges to assess reasonableness from the perspective of the officer at the scene, considering the circumstances apparent to them at the time.

This "reasonable officer" standard is highly deferential to police. It explicitly prevents second-guessing based on hindsight. An officer who claims they believed a suspect was dangerous gets enormous benefit of the doubt, even if the suspect turns out to have been unarmed, even if a more experienced officer might have read the situation differently.

Some scholars argue that Graham effectively undermined much of Garner's promise. Yes, you can't shoot an unarmed, non-dangerous fleeing suspect. But the determination of whether a suspect was dangerous comes from the officer's perspective, and courts rarely question those judgment calls.

The result is a legal framework that looks protective of suspects on paper but often defers to officers in practice. Garner established an important principle. But the principle's application depends heavily on how courts interpret police officers' stated beliefs about danger.

The Broader Context

Tennessee versus Garner sits within a larger ongoing American conversation about police use of force. When can officers legally kill? When should they? These questions have no easy answers, and the answers we do have keep evolving.

The case also illustrates how constitutional rights work in practice. The Fourth Amendment's ban on unreasonable seizures is old and abstract. Its application to specific situations—like a police officer shooting a fleeing teenager—requires interpretation, judgment, and ultimately a decision by courts about what the Constitution's broad language means in concrete circumstances.

For the Garner family, the constitutional interpretation came too late to save Edward. But the ruling that bears their name has likely saved others—people who might have been shot in the back while running, who instead were chased, caught, and brought before a court to face charges for whatever they had done.

That's what the rule of law looks like: imperfect, slow to change, but capable eventually of recognizing that shooting an unarmed child for climbing a fence is not how a constitutional democracy should operate.