John F. Cox III served as a federal law clerk in the Eastern District of Virginia, an assistant U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., as an FBI supervisory special agent and as a federal criminal trial attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he prosecuted violent crimes nationally and served as the DOJ ‘s Criminal Division’s representative to the FBI’s Shooting Incident Review Group. The views expressed here are the writer’s own.

Renee Goode’s life mattered. As did Alex Pretti’s. Lorenzo Salgado Araujo’s life mattered too. The life of the person killed by ICE in Biddeford Monday morning mattered as well.

But so did Edward Garner’s. And William James Caldwell’s. And so did Ashtian Barnes‘. Lives not generally known, but lives that merited an examination of whether the circumstances of their deaths at the hand of the state were reasonable. Whether it was reasonable to shoot a nonviolent fleeing felon, whether it was reasonable to set a roadblock around a blind curve and whether it was reasonable to shoot and kill a person driving off after being stopped for unpaid tolls. At least that is what the Supreme Court of the United States has said.

Police do not have carte blanche to kill. Our Constitution’s Fourth Amendment safeguards our right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. A seizure occurs whenever an officer restrains a person’s freedom to walk away. Police may only seize a person when they have probable cause to believe that the person has committed a crime.

In 1985, the Supreme Court struck the balance on what was and was not constitutional regarding law enforcement use of deadly force against people. Responding to a police officer shooting 15-year-old Edward Garner — slight and apparently unarmed — in the back of the head as he attempted to climb a fence to escape from a burglary, the Court ruled that the use of deadly force was constitutionality permissible only when, under the totality of circumstances, its use was necessary to prevent the felon’s escape and the officer had probable cause to believe that the suspect posed a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others, and where feasible, some warning that the officer was going to shoot was given.

This last requirement was important, because it afforded a person the chance to choose life — to submit to law enforcement so as to avoid being killed. Applying this standard, the Court ruled that a Tennessee law that allowed police to shoot any fleeing felon, regardless of circumstance, was unconstitutional.

And it applied this standard to roadblocks four years later in a case involving a police roadblock set around a blind curve with lights facing in direction of William James Caldwell, who had been fleeing the police in a stolen vehicle for 20 miles, drove into the roadblock and died. The lower court had said that his family was not entitled to recover damages for his death, because Caldwell had driven into the roadblock himself.

The Supreme Court disagreed. The Supreme Court returned the case to the lower court for determination of whether the county’s actions were reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. A key factor in this assessment was whether or not Caldwell had adequate warning of what amounted to the use of deadly force, here a roadblock, that police had elected to use. Here, he had none.

More recently, the Supreme Court returned to a lower court the case of Ashtian Barnes. Barnes had been driving his daughter-in-law’s car on a Texas roadway. Police stopped Barnes because the car had unpaid tolls. During the apprehension, Barnes attempted to drive off. The officer hopped onto the running board of Barnes’ car and fired two shots into the side of the driver side window, killing Barnes.

As did the Court in Caldwell’s case, the Court returned the case to the lower court for assessment of whether or not the officer’s actions were reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. But here the Court reserved for decision at a later time whether or not it was appropriate to consider whether the officer’s actions which led up to the shooting — here, stepping onto the running board of the car — contributed to the officer’s decision to use deadly force.

These are just three cases in the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence addressing law enforcement’s use of deadly force. In the first, the Court expressed concern that a citizen’s flight from a nonviolent felony deserved death. In the second, the Court appeared to be concerned that deadly force was being used to stop a motorist without warning. The third case is similar, but it is especially interesting that the Supreme Court seemed to suggest that an officer’s actions that contributed to the officer’s subsequent decision to use deadly force were relevant in the calculus of determining whether or not the officers actions were reasonable.

But the judicial solution is clunky — and takes time, sometimes over a decade. And where estates settle civil cases, it ultimately is not even available. That is simply not acceptable where citizens are being shot in the face, or the back, or stomach, and killed. And even if a judgment is rendered in a timely manner, it is often an externalized cost, paid by the government with no impact to the offending agent.

Here, consider the award of $3 million to the parents of 18-year-old Zachary Champommier, senselessly shot through his driver’s side window by a plainclothes federal agent after the undercover agents surprised Champommier in a Los Angeles parking lot and Champommier attempted to drive away. At best a paltry sum for a teenager’s life. Treasure paid without consequence, to be sure.

A more direct path to preserving human life would be for Congress to enshrine the DOJ’s 1995 Deadly Force Policy, which ably governed federal law enforcement’s use of deadly force for over seven years, into a criminal statute. The legislation could be named “The Federal Law Enforcement Accountability Act” or “The Citizen Protection Act.”

Under it, federal law enforcement officers would be allowed to use deadly force against people only when necessary. It would enshrine the paramount value of human life, criminalizing the use of deadly force when a safe alternative was available. And face a criminal sanction for not, with graduated penalties for unlawful use not involving injury, unlawful use resulting in physical injury and unlawful use resulting in death.

The first is extremely important, as most law enforcement shots are misses, but are no less dangerous. And the real benefit of this statute would be in the use of deadly force cases that never materialize.

History has shown that the judicial solution simply comes too late for a citizen staring down the barrel of an officer’s gun. It is time to hold federal law enforcement accountable. And for Congress to act.