Iwoinakee Gebray Harris-Billups v. Milele Anderson

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[PUBLISH]

In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Eleventh Circuit

____________________

No. 22-10033

____________________

IWOINAKEE GEBRAY HARRIS-BILLUPS,

Surviving Children of Decedent on behalf of

Quamere Jadon Harris

on behalf of Quamillieon Jaden Daniel

as administrator of the estate of Quintas Deshun Harris,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

versus

MILELE ANDERSON,

Defendant-Appellee.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Northern District of Georgia

D.C. Docket No. 1:19-cv-03984-SCJ

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22-10033 Opinion of the Court 2

____________________

Before NEWSOM, LUCK, and TJOFLAT, Circuit Judges.

NEWSOM, Circuit Judge:

This is a tragic case, from beginning to end. It’s tragic for

Quintas Deshun Harris, a Navy veteran who, having fired on

several police officers who sought to question him, was then killed

in a hail of 58 bullets. It’s tragic for Mr. Harris’s grieving family—

his mother and two children, who lost a son and father. And it’s

tragic for Milele Anderson—the officer who discharged the fatal

shot and who now lives with the memories of Mr. Harris holding

a gun to her head, the images of him shooting at one of her

colleagues, and the reality that she took a life.

Out of the tragedy arises a legal issue that requires our

decision: When Officer Anderson fired the bullet that killed Mr.

Harris, did she effect an “unreasonable . . . seizure[]” within the

meaning of the Fourth Amendment? We hold that she did not.

Having reviewed the record—and, most importantly, having

repeatedly reviewed the bodycam footage of the incident—we

hold, to the contrary, that she acted reasonably. In the moments

leading up to Officer Anderson’s decision to take the final shot, Mr.

Harris had accosted her and held a gun to her head, separately

pointed his gun at her and her colleagues, barricaded himself in his

car, and exchanged fire with the officers. Finally, in (literally) the

split second before Officer Anderson pulled the trigger for the last

time, Mr. Harris, who had been hit four times and had fallen to the

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pavement, lurched violently. Particularly given all that had

preceded it, a prudent officer witnessing Mr. Harris’s lurch could

well have thought that he was gearing up for yet another attack.

In those circumstances, it was reasonable—and thus lawful—for

Officer Anderson to shoot when she did. The Constitution didn’t

require her to wait.

I

If a picture is worth a thousand words, the video footage of

the incident underlying this case is worth ten thousand. Officer

Anderson’s chest-mounted camera captured the moments that

immediately preceded the shot that killed Mr. Harris. And we’ll

get there soon enough. First, though, we recount the events that

occurred before Officer Anderson activated her bodycam.

Around midnight on August 2, 2017, Officer Anderson

pulled into an apartment complex in DeKalb County, Georgia,

responding to a noise complaint. Almost immediately, Mr.

Harris—who was suffering psychosis and stammering about

“death or dying”—accosted Officer Anderson and put a gun to her

head. Officer Anderson drew her sidearm and Mr. Harris backed

off—only to point his gun at her partner.

Weapons drawn all around, a standoff ensued. The officers

ordered Mr. Harris to drop his gun. But he kept it trained on them

and a third officer who had arrived to provide backup. Mr. Harris

warned that he would kill them all—and he even put the gun to his

own head, threatening to kill himself. Several tense moments

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passed as the officers repeatedly implored Mr. Harris to stand

down. Their pleas went unheeded.

Still armed, Mr. Harris got into his parked car. As he did, a

gun fell to the ground. Thinking that Mr. Harris was then

unarmed, one of the officers holstered his weapon and announced

that Harris had dropped his gun. But the peace was false: Mr.

Harris promptly drew a second gun, and the standoff resumed.

It was at this point that Officer Anderson activated her

bodycam. The footage it captured is key to this case and is

accessible here. See Video, Doc. 23-4

(https://www.ca11.uscourts.gov/media-sources). Readers would

do well to stop and watch it. Here, in brief, is what it shows:

0:00–1:10. As the camera begins to roll, Officer Anderson

narrates, clearly on edge: “Ass should have been fuckin’ shot,” she

snaps. Id. at 0:06–0:21. She and her partners sternly—and

repeatedly—order Mr. Harris to “put the weapon down!” Id.

Officer Anderson repositions herself to avoid crossfire and instructs

the others to do likewise: “Watch the crossfire!” she commands.

Id. at 0:45; see also id. at 0:26–0:38. She moves in front of Mr.

Harris’s car, eyeing him through the windshield.

1:11–1:20. The dam breaks. At the 1:11 mark, Mr. Harris

opens fire on the officers. They respond relentlessly, unleashing a

five-second barrage of 54 bullets. Id. at 1:12–1:17. Mr. Harris

emerges from the car, and Officer Anderson fires three more times.

Id. at 1:17–1:20. (Of these 57 bullets, four hit Mr. Harris—one each

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in his abs, back, forearm, and calf.) Mr. Harris falls to the

pavement.

1:21–1:24. At this point, Mr. Harris appears to have been

disarmed—his first gun remains where he dropped it, several feet

from where he lies, and the second is just next to it. See id. at 1:39. 1

Even so, the situation remains extremely volatile. One officer cries

out that he’s been “shot in the hand, shot in the hand!” Id. at 1:21–

1:24. (The bullet fragment, as it turns out, was from his own

weapon.) Officer Anderson keeps her gun trained on Mr. Harris,

who is writhing on the pavement, in the fetal position, atop shards

of glass. Id. at 1:20–1:24.

This case turns on what happens during the next second.

1:25–1:26. At the 1:25 mark, Harris lurches—violently. Id.

at 1:25. His legs kick outward, his chest jumps off the ground, and

his arms swing down to his torso. 2 Immediately, Officer Anderson

takes one more shot. Id. This bullet, the 58th fired at Mr. Harris,

kills him.

II

Acting as his estate’s administrator and on behalf of his two

sons, Mr. Harris’s mother, Ms. Iwoinakee Harris-Billups, filed suit

1 This freeze-frame image comes from the moment just after the 58th and final

shot, but depicts the guns’ locations.

2 The lurch lasts only a split second. To see it more clearly, viewers should

reduce the video’s speed and turn up their screen’s brightness.

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against Officer Anderson. Ms. Harris-Billups principally sought

damages under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, 3 alleging that Officer Anderson

had used constitutionally excessive force—and had thereby

“unreasonabl[y] . . . seiz[ed]” Mr. Harris in violation of the Fourth

Amendment—when she fired the 58th and fatal bullet. She also

appended two Georgia-law claims: one for assault and battery, see

Ga. Code Ann. §§ 51-1-13, 51-1-14 (West 2022), and another for

wrongful death, see id. § 51-4-2.

Officer Anderson moved for summary judgment. She

argued that qualified immunity shielded her from suit on the § 1983

claim and that official immunity protected her from the state-law

claims.

The district court granted Officer Anderson’s motion. It first

agreed that qualified immunity knocked out Ms. Harris-Billups’s §

1983 claim. In particular, it held that Officer Anderson’s “split-

second” decision to fire the fatal bullet didn’t violate the Fourth

Amendment: It was “objectively reasonable,” the court concluded,

“for [Officer Anderson] to believe that [Mr. Harris] still posed a

threat at the time of the final shot.” Because that holding alone

warranted granting Officer Anderson summary judgment, the

3In relevant part: “Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance,

regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of

Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States

or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights,

privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable

to the party injured in an action at law . . . .” 42 U.S.C. § 1983.

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court found no need to assess the second prong of the qualified-

immunity analysis: whether Officer Anderson’s actions had

violated “clearly established” law.

Having rejected Ms. Harris-Billups’s federal constitutional

claim, the district court refused to consider her state-law claims.

For support, the court cited 28 U.S.C. § 1367(c), which permits a

district court to “decline to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over

a claim” if it has “dismissed all claims over which it has original

jurisdiction.” 28 U.S.C. § 1367(c)(3).

This is Ms. Harris-Billups’s appeal. 4

III

A government official exercising discretionary authority—as

all agree Officer Anderson was—is entitled to qualified immunity

on a plaintiff’s § 1983 claim unless (1) she “violated one or more

constitutional rights” and (2) “it was clearly established at the time

that [her] specific actions did so.” Powell v. Snook, 25 F.4th 912,

920 (11th Cir. 2022). Like the district court, we conclude that this

case can be decided at the first step of the qualified-immunity

analysis. For reasons we will explain, we hold that Officer

4We review de novo whether the district court was correct to award Officer

Anderson qualified immunity, see Dukes v. Deaton, 852 F.3d 1035, 1041 (11th

Cir. 2017), and we review for abuse of discretion the court’s decision to decline

supplemental jurisdiction, see Raney v. Allstate Ins., 370 F.3d 1086, 1088–89

(11th Cir. 2004).

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Anderson did not violate the Fourth Amendment when she shot

and killed Mr. Harris.

A

The Fourth Amendment forbids law-enforcement officers

from making “unreasonable . . . seizures.” U.S. Const. amend. IV.

“[T]here can be no question that apprehension [of a suspect] by the

use of deadly force is a seizure . . . .” Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S.

1, 7 (1985). So Officer Anderson’s conduct here—shooting and

killing Mr. Harris—is “subject to the reasonableness requirement

of the Fourth Amendment.” Id.

In many cases, a claim that a seizure was unreasonable

would force us to “slosh our way through the factbound morass

of” the “reasonableness” analysis. Scott v. Harris, 550 U.S. 372, 383

(2007). Here, though, a bright(ish) line emerges: “[A]n officer may

use deadly force when [s]he ‘has probable cause to believe that the

suspect poses a threat of serious physical harm, either to the officer

or to others’ . . . . ” Powell, 25 F.4th at 922 (internal punctuation

omitted) (quoting Vaughan v. Cox, 343 F.3d 1323, 1329–30 (11th

Cir. 2003)). Probable cause, in turn, exists when the “facts and

circumstances [are] sufficient to warrant a prudent” officer in

reaching that conclusion. Black v. Wigington, 811 F.3d 1259, 1267

(11th Cir. 2016) (defining “probable cause”). And to be clear, the

inquiry is an objective one—the question isn’t whether Officer

Anderson herself actually believed that the circumstances justified

the use of deadly force, but rather whether a reasonable officer in

her position could have so concluded. See Graham v. Connor, 490

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U.S. 386, 397 (1989). “Probable cause,” the Supreme Court has

emphasized, “is not a high bar.” District of Columbia v. Wesby,

138 S. Ct. 577, 586 (2018).

Several important facts would have justified a reasonable

officer in believing that Mr. Harris posed a lethal threat at the time

Officer Anderson fired the fatal shot. First, Mr. Harris had access

to at least two guns. True, they weren’t within his immediate

reach, but they weren’t far beyond it. See Video at 1:39. With a

quick lunge, he probably could have reached them. And

remember, just minutes earlier, Mr. Harris, having dropped one

gun, had surprised the officers with a second. Accordingly, Officer

Anderson could reasonably have feared that he had yet another

gun at the ready. In any event, Mr. Harris’s access to deadly

weapons supports a reasonable conclusion that he posed a deadly

threat. Cf. Davis v. Waller, 44 F.4th 1305, 1314 (11th Cir. 2022)

(“[W]e have consistently said that it is reasonable for an officer to

believe that a suspect poses an ‘immediate risk of serious harm to

[him]’ when the suspect is armed.”); Powell, 25 F.4th at 922

(“[W]hen a suspect’s gun is available for ready use—even when the

suspect has not drawn his gun—an officer is not required to wait

and hope for the best.”) (internal quotations omitted).

Second, Mr. Harris had proven his willingness to use those

guns against the officers. By the time Officer Anderson fired the

final shot, Mr. Harris had (1) held a gun to Officer Anderson’s head,

(2) pointed a gun at other officers, (3) ignored the officers’ repeated

orders to “put the weapon down,” and, finally, (4) engaged in an

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active firefight. Lest there be any doubt, anyone who uses or

threatens to use a deadly weapon in the way that Mr. Harris did

“poses a threat of serious physical harm.” Powell, 25 F.4th at 922;

see also Davis, 44 F.4th at 1314 (canvassing decisions authorizing

police officers’ use of deadly force against drivers who use or

threaten to use their cars as weapons).

Third, Mr. Harris was acting erratically and displaying a

frighteningly “unstable frame of mind.” Long v. Slaton, 508 F.3d

576, 581–82 (11th Cir. 2007) (confirming that a suspect’s “unstable

frame of mind” can support probable cause to use deadly force).

Not only had he committed dangerous “criminal act[s],” he had

also “energetic[ally] eva[ded]” the officers by barricading himself in

his car and ignoring more than a dozen orders to surrender. Id.

Against that backdrop, a reasonable officer could certainly

have interpreted Mr. Harris’s sudden lurch as the commencement

of yet another attack. As we have explained—and as the bodycam

video confirms—Mr. Harris’s lurch was not the staggering, slow-

to-get-up tossing of a dazed or injured athlete. It was the jolt of one

jarred awake or springing into sudden, urgent action. In the blink

of an eye, Mr. Harris’s upper body rose off the ground, his legs

kicked, and his arms swooped down toward his torso. Could he

have been working up the momentum to stand or slide toward one

of the guns on the ground? Might he have been reaching for a third

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gun in his pants? Or was he instead just writhing in pain? 5 We can’t

be sure what Mr. Harris was doing. And that is precisely the point:

“[A]n officer is not required to wait until an armed and dangerous

felon has drawn a bead on [her] or others before using deadly

force.” Montoute v. Carr, 114 F.3d 181, 185 (11th Cir. 1997); cf.

also Long, 508 F.3d at 581–82 (upholding as reasonable an officer’s

use of deadly force against a mentally unstable individual who had

stolen a police cruiser, even though he hadn’t yet driven it

dangerously); Mullenix v. Luna, 577 U.S. 7, 17–18 (2015) (endorsing

Long).

* * *

Bottom line: Officer Anderson was facing down a man who

had been threatening to kill her for several minutes straight. He

had held a gun to her head, separately pointed his gun at her and

her partners, spurned repeated orders to drop his weapons and

surrender, barricaded himself in his car, and, finally, opened fire.

This man knew how to conceal guns; he was suicidal, dogged, and

erratic; and he had shown no signs of backing down. And with the

5 Ms. Harris-Billups insists that, viewing the evidence in the light most

favorable to her and drawing all reasonable inferences in her favor—as we

must on summary judgment—we have to assume that Mr. Harris’s lurch was

“due to the pain that he [wa]s experiencing.” Br. of Appellant at 21. The point,

though, as explained in text, is that the actual reason for Mr. Harris’s lurch—

whether he meant to fight, stand up, or grab a gun, or was instead just

experiencing pain—doesn’t control our analysis; rather, what matters is that a

reasonable officer couldn’t have excluded any of these possibilities, and thus

could have viewed Mr. Harris’s lurch as threatening.

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lurch, he seemed to be springing back into action. We have little

trouble concluding that, in those circumstances, Officer Anderson

could reasonably have believed that he posed a lethal threat. Her

decision to neutralize that threat was “[ ]reasonable” and therefore

constitutional.

B

Ms. Harris-Billups raises several counterarguments. With

respect, none persuades us.

First, Ms. Harris-Billups asserts that a comparison of two

freeze-frame photos from the beginning and end of Mr. Harris’s

lurch proves that the movement couldn’t “reasonably be construed

as potentially threatening,” Br. of Appellant at 28—because, she

says, the two stills “show[ ] that Mr. Harris’s only movement at this

time was going from laying on his right shoulder and right leg with

his legs curled and left leg bent in the air and hands to his head to a

new position in which his right shoulder remained on the ground,

his right leg remained on the ground, his head became raised and

his arms were curled with his hands near his abdominal area,” id.

at 8. But policing doesn’t occur in freeze-frames. It’s not just the

positioning of Mr. Harris’s body parts that would have justified a

reasonable officer in thinking his lurch threatening, but also the

suddenness with which he began to shift from a prone,

unmenacing posture to a potentially violent one. The video

captures that suddenness in a way the freeze-frame images miss.

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Second, Ms. Harris-Billups asserts that Officer Anderson’s

failure to take cover between the initial 57-bullet blast and Mr.

Harris’s lurch proves that she no longer viewed him as a threat.

We disagree for two reasons. As an initial matter, Officer

Anderson’s private, subjective thoughts are irrelevant. The

“reasonableness inquiry in an excessive force case is an objective

one” that doesn’t turn on an individual officer’s “underlying intent

or motivation.” Graham, 490 U.S. at 397 (internal quotation

omitted). 6 Moreover, and in any event, the fact that Officer

Anderson felt comfortable not taking cover before Mr. Harris

suddenly lurched says little about how she (or a reasonable officer)

would have felt after he did so. A reasonable officer could very well

have thought that the lurch fundamentally altered the complexion

of the situation.

Third, Ms. Harris-Billups asserts (quoting her expert) that

Officer Anderson had no cause to shoot Mr. Harris because she had

plenty of “time to fully assess the fact that the threat was alleviated

and Mr. Harris was ‘defeated by gunfire, had no weapon in his

hand, [was] wounded and laying huddled on the ground.’” Br. of

Appellant at 30 (quoting Doc. 26-4 at 9). That was all true—right

up until it wasn’t. Indeed, Officer Anderson presumably did

6 That settled legal principle likewise defeats Ms. Harris-Billups’s accusation

that Officer Anderson “offered an excuse” for shooting Mr. Harris “that is not

supported by the facts.” Br. of Appellant at 31–32. Again, all that matters—at

least for Fourth Amendment purposes—is that a reasonable officer in Officer

Anderson’s shoes could have believed that the use of deadly force was

justified.

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conclude that Mr. Harris wasn’t dangerous when he was “lying

huddled on the ground.” And that likely explains why she didn’t

shoot him while he was lying huddled on the ground. In any event,

we needn’t address whether Officer Anderson would have been

justified in firing once more had Mr. Harris not suddenly lurched.

Because he did. And that lurch changed things. At the very least,

having witnessed Mr. Harris lurch, a reasonable officer could have

concluded that he was once again on the move, and once again

posed a threat.

Fourth, Ms. Harris-Billups emphasizes that Officer

Anderson was the only officer who shot Mr. Harris when he

lurched; that fact, she says, shows “that Mr. Harris was no longer a

threat.” Id. At most, though, this suggests that Officer Anderson’s

colleagues didn’t themselves believe that Mr. Harris posed a threat.

But even indulging that assumption, those officers’ subjective

opinions wouldn’t render a third officer’s contrary judgment—

especially one formed in (literally) a split second—disqualifyingly

unreasonable. See Davis, 44 F.4th at 1318 (observing that “other

officers’ decision not to shoot does not render [the defendant

officer’s] choice [to shoot] unreasonable” because “[m]ore than one

course of action can be reasonable”). 7

7 In any event, as this Court recently explained in another case, the assumption

that underlies Ms. Harris-Billups’s contention is dubious. Just because other

officers held their fire doesn’t mean they thought Mr. Harris was benign. One

of them had been shot in the hand and might have been unable to discharge

his weapon. And another was on the other side of Mr. Harris’s car and might

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Finally, Ms. Harris-Billups contends that Officer Anderson is

just like the policeman to whom we denied qualified immunity in

Hunter v. City of Leeds, 941 F.3d 1265 (11th Cir. 2019). We

disagree. The officer there had fired “seven additional shots against

a suspect who . . . had dropped his weapon” in compliance with

police directives “and was apparently no longer resisting.” Id. at

1280. That’s not this case. Officer Anderson wasn’t contending

with a defenseless man who had surrendered. She was up against

a man who (or so a reasonable officer could have concluded) bore

the means, and the ability, and the demonstrated intent to shoot

her, a man who was acting erratically and violently, and who had

shown no sign of giving up. Quite unlike the suspect in Hunter,

Mr. Harris posed a real and immediate threat of grave harm.

* * *

For all these reasons, we hold that in firing the shot that

tragically killed Mr. Harris, Officer Anderson did not violate the

Fourth Amendment. Accordingly, she is entitled to qualified

immunity on Ms. Harris-Billups’s § 1983 claim.

V

Once it had dismissed the § 1983 claim—the sole claim over

which it had original jurisdiction—the district court was well

not have seen the lurch. See Davis, 44 F.4th at 1318 (noting that “other

officers’ decision not to shoot” is “especially” weak evidence that it was

unreasonable to shoot if the various officers are in “dissimilar positions . . . on

the scene”).

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within its discretion to decline to exercise supplemental jurisdiction

over Ms. Harris-Billups’s state-law claims. Indeed, a federal statute

authorizes district courts to do just that. See 28 U.S.C. § 1367(c)(3).

And we have gone even further, “encourag[ing]” district courts to

“dismiss any remaining state claims when, as here, the federal

claims have been dismissed prior to trial.” Raney, 370 F.3d at 1088–

89. A district court doesn’t abuse its discretion by heeding our

advice.

AFFIRMED.