Constitutional accountability for police shootings is imposed in part through civil rights lawsuits alleging Fourth Amendment violations, but little is known about how judges evaluate these claims. I introduce original data on all federal circuit court decisions resolving Fourth Amendment excessive force claims in police shooting cases over three decades. The quasi-random assignment of a majority-Republican panel substantially increases the probability of circuit courts finding a police shooting to be constitutional. Capturing law's influence by mapping case facts to the three-part analytical framework delineated by the Supreme Court in Graham v. Connor, I find that active resistance and threat immediacy are associated with increases in the probability of finding police shootings to be constitutional, but crime severity is not systematically associated with outcomes. In addition, there is evidence that law conditions the effect of politics, with increases in latent Fourth Amendment reasonableness narrowing the partisan outcome gap in constitutional assessments. The quasi-random assignment of a Black judge does not impact outcomes. The results have important implications for police oversight and longstanding debates in judicial politics over the prevalence of panel effects and the extent to which law influences decision making.

中文翻译：

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警察枪击事件的宪法责任

对警察枪击事件的宪法责任部分是通过指控违反第四修正案的民权诉讼来实施的，但人们对法官如何评估这些主张知之甚少。我介绍了三十年来所有联邦巡回法院裁决的原始数据，这些裁决解决了第四修正案在警察枪击案件中过度使用武力的主张。共和党占多数的小组的准随机分配大大增加了巡回法院裁定警察枪击事件符合宪法的可能性。通过将案件事实映射到最高法院在格雷厄姆诉康纳一案中描绘的三部分分析框架来捕捉法律的影响，我发现积极抵抗和威胁即时性与认定警察开枪符合宪法但犯罪的可能性增加有关。严重程度与结果没有系统相关。此外，有证据表明，法律会影响政治的影响，第四修正案潜在合理性的增加缩小了宪法评估中党派结果的差距。黑人法官的准随机分配不会影响结果。研究结果对警察监督和司法政治中关于小组效应的普遍性以及法律影响决策的程度的长期争论具有重要意义。