This news on Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito: a newly released 1984 memo shows that Alito saw no constitutional problem with a police officer shooting and killing an unarmed teenager who was fleeing after a $10 home burglary. At the time, Alito was working as assistant to the U.S. solicitor general in the Reagan Justice Department. He wrote “I think the shooting can be justified as reasonable. I do not think the Constitution provides an answer to the officer’s dilemma.” According to the Los Angeles Times, the Supreme Court used the same case, a year later, to set a firm national rule against the routine use of “deadly force” against fleeing suspects who pose no danger. Writing for the majority of the court, Justice Byron White wrote “A police officer may not seize an unarmed, nondangerous suspect by shooting him dead.”