Can it be excessive force for police simply to put bodyweight on an unresistant person? It absolutely can, and it can be lethal.
Crushed: Bodyweight compression leading to asphyxia, as seen in officer bodycam in Scott v. Smith.
The most recent decision in this area from the Ninth Circuit just came out this week in Scott v. Smith, 23-15480, which denied qualified immunity to Las Vegas police officers who killed an unarmed, unresistant mentally ill man via compression asphyxia.
The Ninth Circuit panel notes that the use of bodyweight can amount to a very high degree of force, even if it is not, in the popular imagination, on a level of violence akin to shootings or dog bites:
Our precedent establishes that the use of bodyweight compression on a prone individual can cause compression asphyxia. Drummond ex rel. Drummond v. City of Anaheim, 343 F.3d 1052, 1056–57 (9th Cir. 2003). In Drummond, for example, officers “press[ed] their weight on [the plaintiff’s] neck and torso as he lay handcuffed on the ground.” Id. at 1056. This force was “severe and, under the circumstances, capable of causing death or serious injury.” Id. Drawing all reasonable inferences in Plaintiffs’ favor, a jury could find Smith and Huntsman’s conduct was similar deadly force.
Compression asphyxia also factored into the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers in 2020, an incident that galvanized the Black Lives Matter protests of that year.