2 Lawsuits Cast Further Doubt on the Claim That ICE Agent Jonathan Ross Killed Renée Good in Self-Defense
According to complaints filed by Good's family, Ross was not in any danger when he fired three shots into her car.
Jonathan Ross, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent who fatally shot Minneapolis protester Renée Good on January 7, was not in any danger when he fired three rounds into the Honda Pilot she was driving, according to a pair of federal lawsuits that her brother and widow filed on Thursday. Nor was he responding to a threat that Good posed to anyone else, say the plaintiffs, who allege that Ross violated the Fourth Amendment and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) policies by using deadly force in circumstances that did not justify it.
Based on video recorded by witnesses, we already had reason to doubt the assertion that Good "weaponize[d] her vehicle" and "attempted to run a law enforcement officer over," as Kristi Noem, then the DHS secretary, averred the day after the shooting. It also seemed clear that Ross and other ICE agents at the scene disregarded widely accepted traffic stop guidelines and flouted DHS use-of-force rules. But the lawsuits add new details that, if accurate, further undermine the claim that Ross acted in self-defense.
The plaintiffs in both cases are Brent Ganger, Good's brother, and Rebecca Good, her domestic partner. One lawsuit seeks damages from the U.S. government under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA). The second lawsuit relies on the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, which covers conspiracies to deprive people of "equal privileges and immunities under the laws" or "the equal protection of the laws," and Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics, a 1971 Supreme Court decision that recognized a cause of action for violations of Fourth Amendment rights. The defendants in the second lawsuit include Ross, 10 unnamed colleagues, Noem, and several other federal officials.
The complaints, which were filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota, tell the same basic story. Renée and Rebecca Good were on their way home after dropping Renée's 6-year-old son off at school on a Wednesday morning when they encountered immigration agents deployed as part of President Donald Trump's deportation campaign. Renée stopped the car on Portland Avenue between 33rd and 34th streets and began "honking her horn to alert her neighbors to ICE's presence," the FTCA complaint says, while Rebecca "got out and began to film the agents with her cell phone." Although the Honda Pilot was partially blocking Portland Avenue, "numerous vehicles, including the unmarked Chevrolet Tahoe driven by [Ross], drove around their stopped car without incident."
When Ross got out of his SUV, he was holding his cellphone, which he used to record the scene as he walked around the car. That video shows Renée Good seated in the driver's seat, smiling and talking calmly through an open window. "That's fine, dude," Good assures Ross, apparently referring to the fact that he is recording her. "I'm not mad at you. I'm not mad at any of you." Within two minutes, Good was mortally wounded.
When two other ICE agents pulled up on the other side of Good's car, she waved, indicating that they should "just go around." They did not want to do that. Instead, "they got out of their truck, and one of them shouted, 'Out of the car. Get out of the fucking car.'" Apparently trying to enforce that order, an ICE agent grabbed the handle of the driver's side door. Meanwhile, another agent had told Good to drive away.
Good chose to follow the latter instruction. She "began to slowly reverse the vehicle," then "turned the wheels of the vehicle to the right—away from Ross, who was positioned at the front left of the vehicle." She "began to slowly move forward, with the vehicle starting to make a right turn away from the agents."
All this is consistent with what bystander footage and Ross's video show, although the plaintiffs' account omits a detail suggesting alarm at the ICE agents' aggressive attitude. "Drive, baby, drive," Rebecca told Renée.
As Renée took Rebecca's advice, according to the FTCA complaint, Ross "moved away from the vehicle, his legs and body out of the vehicle's path, while drawing his firearm with his right hand and leaning forward to shoot into the vehicle." As he "leaned forward to shoot, his left hand—still carrying his cell phone—contacted the car near the left headlight, as the car moved past him."
That account suggests any injury Ross suffered was not only minor but the result of his decision to shoot Good. That is a far cry from Trump's description of the incident. The day of the shooting, Trump averred that Good "violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer" and that "it is hard to believe he is alive."
Although Noem's story was less dramatic, she claimed Good had committed "an act of domestic terrorism" by trying to "kill or to cause bodily harm to agents." She asserted that Ross "fired defensive shots" because he was "fearing for his life" and trying to protect "the other officers around him" and "the safety of the public."
According to the lawsuits, none of that was true. "Ross, leaning forward, with his legs, head, and body out of the path of the vehicle, fired the first shot into the bottom left of Renee's windshield," the FTCA complaint says. "As the car continued its slow right turn away from Ross, he fired two more times into the open driver's side window."
The second round, which Ross fired as the car was moving past him, struck Good in the left temple. Another round went through her left forearm. Her SUV, now out of control, careened down the street and crashed into a parked car. "Fucking bitch," Ross remarked.
It was already clear that Ross was not in the path of the Honda Pilot when he fired the second and third shots. But according to the lawsuits, that was also true when he fired the first shot.
"At no time was Ross at risk of being run over by the vehicle," the FTCA lawsuit says. "To the extent Ross's arm contacted the vehicle near the time of his first shot, it is because Ross intentionally leaned forward to position himself to shoot Renee."
If so, it is hard to see how even the first shot could be consistent with Supreme Court precedents addressing the use of deadly force. In the 1985 case Tennessee v. Garner, which involved a suspected burglar who was shot while fleeing police, the Court held that the use of deadly force is unconstitutional in such circumstances "unless it is necessary to prevent the escape and the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others." Under Garner, the FTCA complaint notes, "deadly force may not be used against a fleeing person who poses no immediate threat."
To assess whether a use of force is "objectively reasonable" under the Fourth Amendment, the Supreme Court explained four years later in Graham v. Connor, judges should consider "the totality of the circumstances," paying "careful attention to the facts and circumstances of each particular case." The Court said relevant factors include "the severity of the crime at issue, whether the suspect poses an immediate threat to the safety of the officers or others, and whether he is actively resisting arrest or attempting to evade arrest by flight."
In applying that test, the Supreme Court emphasized last year in Barnes v. Felix, "a court must consider all the relevant circumstances, including facts and events leading up to the climactic moment." That case involved a Texas police officer who stopped a car for suspected toll violations. After endangering himself by jumping on the car as it began to move again, he addressed the resulting hazard by shooting the driver dead. The justices unanimously rejected the test applied by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which focused on "the moment of the threat" to the officer without considering how he ended up in that situation.
Barnes might be relevant in this case, since Ross initially positioned himself in front of the Honda Pilot, creating the perceived danger that supposedly justified his lethal response. In any event, if Ross was already out of the SUV's path when he fired the first shot, the danger was illusory.
That issue is also relevant under Minnesota law, which says "the intentional taking of the life of another" outside of one's home is justified only "when necessary in resisting or preventing an offense which the actor reasonably believes exposes the actor or another to great bodily harm or death" (emphasis added). Minnesota's law of self-defense, in other words, requires a reasonable belief that the use of deadly force is necessary to prevent death or grave bodily harm, which is also the standard in other states and under the rule for federal law enforcement officers. Even if Ross was "fearing for his life," as Noem claimed, that does not necessarily mean his fear was reasonable in the circumstances.
"At no point did Renee pose anything resembling a danger to Ross or to any other person at the scene," the FTCA complaint says. "It was evident that Renee was attempting to slowly drive away, and she had a calm, cordial exchange with Ross in the seconds before he fired. Ross had no reason to believe that he or any other officer was at risk of death or serious bodily injury. No person, including Ross, was in the path of the vehicle at the moment he fired the first shot." Likewise for the second and third shots.
Even if Ross "unreasonably and erroneously believed that he was in danger when he fired," the lawsuit adds, "shooting Renee could not have mitigated any risk to him or to the other agents: firing at a driver in Renee's position only increases the danger to anyone in the vehicle's path, which is why mandatory DHS policy requires agents to consider the implications of an out-of-control conveyance before firing at a driver. Ross fired at Renee with no regard for the safety of anyone present at the scene."
DHS policy warns that officers "should avoid intentionally and unreasonably placing themselves in positions in which they have no alternative to using deadly force." In this case, the FTCA lawsuit says, "Ross positioned himself at the front left of Renee's occupied vehicle while other agents confronted her; occupied one of his hands with the cell phone he was using to film; and leaned toward the vehicle to shoot when he was out of its path."
The DHS policy says the department's employees "may use force only when no reasonably effective, safe, and feasible alternative appears to exist and may use only the level of force that is objectively reasonable in light of the facts and circumstances confronting [the officer] at the time force is applied." In this case, "reasonably effective, safe, and feasible alternatives plainly existed," the plaintiffs say. "Ross needed only to remain out of the vehicle's path, where he already stood, and let Renee continue her right-hand turn."
Because "respect for human life" is a guiding principle, the DHS policy says, officers should be "proficient in a variety of techniques that could aid them in appropriately resolving an encounter," including "de-escalation tactics." De-escalation, the policy explains, is "the use of communication or other techniques during an encounter to stabilize, slow, or reduce the intensity of a potentially violent situation without using physical force, or with a reduction in force."
The ICE agents who confronted Good obviously did not take that advice to heart. Good was not behaving in an aggressive or threatening manner. Aside from honking her horn, she did not try to interfere with immigration enforcement. Her main provocation was partly obstructing traffic by stopping her car. But the ICE agents had no authority to enforce Minnesota traffic laws, and they could have resolved the situation by simply allowing Good to drive away. Instead they ordered her out of her car and threatened to physically enforce that command.
DHS policy also imposes "a duty to intervene to prevent or stop a perceived use of excessive force" by another officer. Yet "none of the agents present intervened to stop Ross or to prevent the escalation that preceded his shots," the FTCA lawsuit notes.
The plaintiffs argue that Ross and the other ICE agents also violated DHS policy by failing to provide Good with medical aid after Ross shot her and actively preventing a doctor who was at the scene from attending to her. "When a person on the street offered assistance, an ICE agent responded, 'No, back up, now!'" the FTCA complaint says. "When the person identified himself as a physician, the ICE agent responded, 'I don't care.'"
Despite the disturbing details highlighted by these lawsuits, Todd Blanche, then the deputy attorney general, saw no need to investigate the shooting. "We don't just go out and investigate every time an officer is forced to defend himself against somebody [who is] putting his life in danger," Blanche, now the attorney general, said on Fox News Sunday a week and a half after Ross killed Good. "We never do." Blanche added that "there are over a thousand shootings every year where law enforcement [officers] are put in danger by individuals and they have to protect themselves, and they have a lawful right to do so."
Blanche, in other words, simply assumed Ross had acted in self-defense without the benefit of an investigation that might have illuminated the issue. His rush to judgment seemed reckless at the time, and it looks even more dubious in light of the facts alleged in these lawsuits.