February 18, 2022
Attorneys general from nine states and the District of Columbia have asked a federal appeals court to reverse a federal judge’s dismissal of the manslaughter case against two US Park Police officers who fatally shot Iranian-American Bijan Ghaisar in Virginia in 2017.
The request was filed in the US Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond, Virginia, in support of Fairfax County, Virginia, prosecutors who obtained indictments of the two officers, Lucas Vinyard and Alejandro Amaya, in October 2020. They want the appeals court to define the standards by which states can prosecute federal officers and to reject the reasoning used by the judge in the Ghaisar case.
Attorneys for the Park Police officers successfully had the case shifted from Fairfax court to federal court, where Senior US District Judge Claude M. Hilton dismissed all charges, concluding that “the officers were reasonable to fear for Officer Amaya’s life” and “the officers’ decision to discharge their firearms was necessary and proper under the circumstances.”
The issues cited by the Virginia prosecutors and the 10 attorneys general, all Democrats, focus on whether Hilton and federal courts in general should easily grant “Supremacy Clause” immunity to federal officers accused of state crimes, and whether the appeals court should clarify the meaning of what are “necessary and proper” actions by a federal officer that entitle them to such immunity.
Federal law allows federal officers who are charged with state criminal violations to remove the case to federal court if they acted “under color of such office.” Judge Hilton accepted the case in April, but Virginia prosecutors argue he was wrong to do so, because the officers acted beyond the scope of their authority. Their brief contends the officers repeatedly violated their training and policies by pursuing Ghaisar for a non-felony offense, pulling their weapons on him and finally shooting him when he was not a threat to the officers or the public.
The officers relied upon the supremacy clause of the Constitution, which holds that state law must defer to federal law and federal officers may not be prosecuted if they acted under federal authority and “did no more than what was necessary and proper.” Those criteria come from an 1890 Supreme Court case in which a federal marshal was prosecuted for killing a California man while protecting a Supreme Court justice.
The brief from the attorneys general notes that the Supreme Court has ruled that “a federal official may not with impunity ignore the limitations which the controlling law has placed on his powers.” The brief urges that “this Court should take this opportunity to articulate a precise standard that respects states’ criminal-law powers by requiring a sufficiently high showing before shielding federal officers from state prosecutions.”
The brief was signed by the attorneys general of Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont, Washington state and the District of Columbia.
