Law

Just an interesting, very simple low-citation long-shot descriptive outcome as a result of the Minneapolis shooting and a very recent supreme court ruling:

Thousands gather in Minneapolis to mourn woman killed by ICE agent : NPR

"The footage shows multiple officers near an SUV stopped in the middle of the road. One officer demands the driver exit the vehicle and grabs the car handle. The SUV reverses, then begins to drive forward, which is when a different officer near the front of the car pulls his weapon and fires into the vehicle. Three gunshots are heard, as the firing officer backs away from the SUV. Moments later, the vehicle crashes."

https://www.npr.org/2026/01/07/nx-s1-5670289/ice-minneapolis-shooting-immigration-crackdown

There is a remote possibility the Justices will eventually use the yesterdays shooting in Minneapolis as a vehicle to revamp legal doctrines of "flight," and reducing or eliminating the legal doctrines on use of force and noncompliance in line with the concurrence in Barnes v. Felix, where Kavanagh takes pains to describe potential situations in which simply starting the ignition of a vehicle - which is less indicative of "flight" than what happened in Minneapolis - would nevertheless qualify as "flight."

Barnes v. Felix - Harvard Law Review https://harvardlawreview.org/print/vol-139/barnes-v-felix/

This is particularly more likely if a local prosecutor seeks to hold the officer that shot at the driver, responsible, as a state can prosecute a federal official so long as, broadly speaking: "When federal officials act beyond the scope of their duties, violate federal law, or behave in an egregious or unwarranted manner, state prosecutions can move forward."

These possibilities, in practice, typically require a federal court to rule. This means before a criminal trial at the state level could proceed, a federal court must rule on whether an officer did the above. The second or third broad category a federal court would rule on provide the legal background to revamp legal precedent on the use of deadly force in the context of flight or noncompliance.

Explainer: Can States Prosecute Federal Officials? Posted on July 17, 2025 Bryna Godar, Staff Attorney PDF Available Here Published: July 17, 2025 https://statedemocracy.law.wisc.edu/featured/2025/explainer-can-states-prosecute-federal-officials/#_ftnref41