Courts & Cops: Why Fourth Amendment Rulings Limiting TASERs Increase Shootings

• In Event: State Repression and Human Rights I

Abstract

Although scholars argue that effective domestic courts constrain government repression (e.g., Hill and Jones 2014, Powell and Staton 2009), little attention has been paid to the mechanism by which courts influence the behavior of police officers, prison guards, and members of the military. In this paper, I investigate the extent to which courts influence behavior by promising to hold police officers personally accountable for violations of human rights. I argue that when courts issue rulings increasing the consequences of particular policing tactics, police officers (re)train and retool avoid being held personally accountable for rights violations in a court of law. To test the implications of my theory, I take advantage of variance in United States District Court of Appeals rulings on the extent to which electronic control devices (ECDs)—colloquially known as TASERs—constitute excessive use-of-force in violation of the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Using qualitative evidence and a difference-in-difference design, I show that court rulings that make police officers more personally accountable for the use of ECDs are associated with decreases in ECD use and cause increases in police shooting deaths.

Author

• Courtenay R. Conrad, University of California, Merced