WASHINGTON – The US. Supreme Court vacated a claim of excessive police force against a Minneapolis police officer who shot and permanently blinded a man during racial unrest following the 2020 murder of George Floyd. The Court ordered lower courts to reconsider their decisions against officer Benjamin Bauer. The Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association greeted the Supreme Court order as “a tremendous win.” The Court didn’t fault lower courts but directed them to look at the Bauer case anew and to consider its recent clarifications on how to consider excessive force cases. The issue is what’s called the Court’s new Moment of Threat Rule. The rule gives priority to the “totality of the circumstances” in police shootings. The new standard was articulated by the Court only 10 days earlier in the Barnes v. Felix case out of Texas. In the ruling, which was unanimous, Justice Elena Kagan, said: “To assess using force, a court must consider all the relevant circumstances, including facts and events leading up to the climactic moment.”
Minneapolis incident profile
Ethan Daniel Marks, age 19, was helping clean up the Longfellow neighborhood after the rioting and looting that followed George Floyd’s murder. A police SWAT team arrived after reports of a stabbing. The team’s van was pelted with rocks, frozen water bottles and glass by onlookers. In the shoving and confusion that followed, Marks stumbled. Bauer fired a 40-millimeter less-than-lethal projectile loaded with a chemical agent. The round hit Marks in the face, rupturing his right eyeball, detaching the retina, and fracturing the eye socket. There was traumatic brain injury. Bauer claimed he was trying to shoot Marks in the torso.
Marks. Had been awarded $2.4 million in earlier court decisions. Had sought $10 million.