At 1045 on the night of October 3rd, 1974, Memphis Police Officers Elton Hyman and Leslie Wright

were dispatched to respond to a report of a break-in.

Officer Hyman went to take a look at the back of the house.

It was dark, but Hyman could see someone run across the backyard.

With a flashlight, he could see the person's arms and hands,

and later said that he figured the person was unarmed.

Hyman called out police, Halt, but the suspected burglar began to climb the backyard fence.

Hyman responded by shooting the fleeing burglar in the back of the head with his 38 caliber

pistol.

The escaping burglar was named Edward Eugene Garner.

Garner was five foot four, weighed about 110 pounds, and was 15 years old. He was an

eighth grader. Police recovered $10 and a purse from his body. Garner was unarmed. He had no weapons at all and he later died on the operating table.

And Hyman was no rogue officer. He was following the law. At the time, Tennessee law allowed the police to use

all necessary means to stop someone from fleeing from an arrest.

Tennessee law allowed police officers to do that even if the person fleeing

posed no threat to anyone. And there were a number of states at the time that

allowed the police to do the exact same thing. Garner's father filed a civil rights lawsuit against the Memphis Police

Department. The lawsuit argued that the state law had violated his son's

Fourth Amendment rights. The Fourth Amendment includes the right to be secure from unreasonable searches and seizure.

In this case, the seizure is the taking of life.

In 1985, the United States Supreme Court agreed with the Garner family.

Justice White, who wrote the opinion for the court, said,

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