Johnson v. Bay Area Rapid Transit District

In the early morning hours of January 1, 2009, on a train platform in Oakland, an encounter between a group of young men and several officers of the Bay Area Rapid Transit (“BART”) police ended with the shooting and death of Oscar Grant III and the allegedly unconstitutional detentions of Grant’s friends, Nigel Bryson, Jack Bryson, Jr., Carlos Reyes, Michael Greer, and Fernando Anicete, Jr. A train full of witnesses observed the encounter; several made video recordings that were replayed widely in the news media and made available on the Internet. Johannes Mehserle, the BART police officer who shot and killed Grant, was convicted criminally for his role in the incident, which also gave rise to several civil suits against Mehserle and the other officers involved in the morning’s events. Two of those suits are the source of the interlocutory appeals now before us.

The Brysons, Reyes, Greer, and Anicete filed a complaint against Mehserle, as well as against Anthony Pirone — the officer who first detained the group — and Pirone’s partner, Marysol Domenici. Among other things, their complaint alleged, under 42 U.S.C. § 1988 , that the officers committed various violations of…