holding that the veracity of the officer’s testimony and the reasonableness of his actions in dealing with a suspect who he believed to be armed and dangerous and to have made a quick movement with his hand going into his coat as if he were going to reach for a weapon were questions appropriately left for a properly informed and instructed jury
How later courts described this case
- holding that the veracity of the officer’s testimony and the reasonableness of his actions in dealing with a suspect who he believed to be armed and dangerous and to have made a quick movement with his hand going into his coat as if he were going to reach for a weapon were questions appropriately left for a properly informed and instructed jury
- sitting en banc, the Seventh Circuit held that “absent a constitutional violation, appellate judges would be well advised not to second-guess an officer’s split-second reasonable judgment to protect himself and those around him through the use of deadly force; rather, courts and juries must determine the propriety of the officer’s actions based upon a thorough review of the knowledge, facts and circumstances known to the officer at the time he exercised his split-second judgment .... ”
- holding that under circumstances of case, fact that suspect was unarmed was irrelevant to excessive force claim where officer reasonably believed he was armed
- reversing and remanding for a new trial because district judge erroneously allowed the jury to be presented with facts unknown and unavailable to the officers at the time of the shooting, namely that the decedent suspect was unarmed
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
RIPPLE, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I concur in the judgment. In my view, the district court’s failure to give defendant’s instruction No. 10 and the giving of plaintiffs instruction No. 28.1 1 constitute reversible error and requires a new trial. With respect to the admissibility of evidence as to whether Mr. Sherrod had a weapon, I agree essentially with the view stated by Judge Cummings in these en banc proceedings.
. The trial court’s treatment of this issue is discussed by the panel in Sherrod v. Berry, 827 F.2d 195, 202-03 (7th Cir.1987) and 827 F.2d at 218-19 (Coffey, J., dissenting).