Qualified Canicide: How Canicide Helps Us Better Understand the Debate Surrounding Qualified Immunity

• In Event: Roundtable: Sentencing and Judicial Decision-Making

Abstract

Police violence affects all living creatures. Yet, little is known regarding how police violence against dogs impacts American jurisprudence. The current paper fills this gap by examining how the federal judiciary’s decisions regarding the police killing of dogs reinforce or resist established Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, especially as it relates to the debate surrounding qualified immunity. Data for this paper comes from a larger project examining federal judicial decisions of cases involving the police killing of dogs. Results indicate that the judiciary uses various legal mechanisms to justify police violence against dogs, and by doing so, transforms Fourth Amendment jurisprudence into an everchanging labyrinth. This transformation has profound consequences on the administration of the law and our relationship to the Law.

Author

• Jeremy Smith, University of Tennessee, Knoxville