Use of deadly force against suspect who repeatedly ignored commands such as to show her hands, place hands on hood of vehicle, or get down, and who then reached her hand behind her back toward waistband, which officer perceived to be a reach for a weapon, did not violate clearly established rights.
Fact disputes precluded summary judgment as to whether decedent was resisting or posed threat of serious physical injury so as to warrant prone maximal-restraint position; despite Scott v. Harris, 5th Circuit treats deadly force as a “special subset of excessive force claims”; prone maximal-restraint position poses substantial risk of death or serious bodily injury and thus is deadly force; unnecessarily placing person in prone maximal-restraint position is a violation of clearly established rights foreclosing qualified immunity.
Hostage from bank robbery was shot ten times by police; court rejects officer’s motion for summary judgment in which he claimed he did not intend to shoot her and never saw her, “court may not simply accept what may be a self-serving account by the police officer”; plaintiff posed no threat because she had raised her hands in surrender; circumstantial evidence was sufficient to warrant finding officer intended to shoot her: fact that she was repeatedly struck by bullets strong implied she was in his line of sight, it was broad daylight, fact she was struck so often makes it hard to believe
Use of deadly force against decedent who had struck officer in the face, resisted arrest despite taser discharges, and bit down on officer’s finger while twisting and turning was objectively reasonable because officer could have reasonably believed that decedent posed a serious threat of physical harm.
Following a high speed chase, plaintiffs stopped, then made a three-point turn in a controlled manner and their vehicle was moving slowly forward, not accelerating and not pointed directly at officers; officers who fired upon them “seized” both driver and passenger; court rejects officers’ claim that passenger was not seized because they intended to shoot only driver, because stopping car would have seized passenger; construing facts in favor of plaintiffs, seizure of slowly moving car was unreasonable where officers could have easily stepped out of vehicle’s path to avoid danger; officers
When officer fired eight shots through closed door of plaintiff’s home, plaintiff was seized within meaning of Fourth Amendment although he was not struck by the shots; this was a show of authority with acquisition of control, a reasonable person would believe he was not free to leave with the officer firing at his house; mere fact that plaintiff said he had a gun and then opened door would not justify using deadly force, but court cannot resolve on summary judgment what officer perceived when plaintiff opened door; under plaintiff’s version of facts, that plaintiff was unarmed when he open
Reversing summary judgment in favor of officers who shot and killed decedent in his ex-wife’s garage; “the totality of the facts to be considered in determining whether the level of force was reasonable includes any immediately connected actions by the officers that escalated a non-lethal situation to a lethal one”; facts taken in light most favorable to plaintiff were that severity of underlying crime (trespass) was low, officers had not intended to arrest decedent initially thus he was not resisting or attempting to evade arrest, defendant was armed with hammer but jury could conclude he
Officer entitled to qualified immunity for shooting plaintiff in the back when he moved as though he was reaching into his waistband, where multiple witnesses had told her that suspect was armed, although plaintiff was patted down by another officer just before he fled and that officer removed nothing from him, because no previous case clearly established that a pat down that recovers nothing eliminates an officer’s objectively reasonable belief that suspect was armed and dangerous; court says whether probable cause existed was a legal issue, not a factual one.
Officers reasonably used deadly force against auto theft suspect who led police on dangerous high-speed chase at night, refused to stop at end of street, and drove vehicle near, toward, and amongst officers on foot.
Tenth Circuit law is that “[t]he reasonableness of the use of force depends not only on whether the officers were in danger at the precise moment that they used force, but also on whether the officers’ own reckless or deliberate conduct during the seizure unreasonably created the need to use such force”; jury instruction to that effect was not required in this case because officer was protected by qualified immunity for his alleged recklessness in leaving his vehicle to approach plaintiff in his car.