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Tennessee V Garner Case Study

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For the case Tennessee v Garner, it involved 2 Memphis police officers, Elton Hymon and Leslie Wright. The incident actually occurred in 1974 and these two police officers were called to a burglary call. The neighbor next door to the house of the possibly burglary notifies Officers Hymon and Wright that she heard glass breaking and someone was breaking in next door (Brody and Acker, 2010). Officer Wright lets dispatch know himself and Officer Hymon are on the scene; however, Officer Hymon proceeds around the back of the house. As Officer Hymon approaches the rear, he hears a door shut and sees someone running from the area. This individual later identified as Edward Eugene Garner approaches a fence, starts to proceed over it and Officer Hymon …show more content…

In deciding such a suit, the Court has to announce what the constitutional rule is—and so in Gamer’s lawsuit, the Court had to say what amount of force counted as “reasonable” under the Fourth Amendment.* However, deciding the constitutional standard for Garner's civil rights suit did not disturb what the standard had to be for state criminal law prosecutions. States still have the authority to dictate under what circumstances police could justifiably use deadly force, and so avoid punishment under state law (Flanders and Welling, …show more content…

The case of Tennessee v Garner was clearly a case of do not shoot. Even if Officer Hymon felt the suspect would not be apprehended if he did not shoot him, does not justify his actions. Yes, technology was not advanced as it is now but by using any means necessary to apprehend a suspect was extreme for that era.
Similar arguments have persisted to the present day as the public has consistently denounced civilian homicides by police officers. People have accused officers of shooting arbitrarily, or unjustifiably, and most frequently of exhibiting racism in such situations. These accusations have been supported by numerous empirical studies showing that police officers kill African-Americans at a disproportionately higher rate than whites (Tennenbaum,

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