holding that officer’s shooting of a mentally unstable driver who drove away from the officer in a stolen police car was objectively reasonable because “the law does not require officers in a tense and dangerous situation to wait until the moment a suspect uses a deadly weapon to act to stop the suspect”
How later courts described this case
- holding that officer’s shooting of a mentally unstable driver who drove away from the officer in a stolen police car was objectively reasonable because “the law does not require officers in a tense and dangerous situation to wait until the moment a suspect uses a deadly weapon to act to stop the suspect”
- explaining that prior case law applies with “obvious clarity” where the circumstances are such that “only an incompetent officer or one intending to violate the law could possibly fail to know what the police did here violated the . . . law” (quotations omitted)
- finding that an officer’s decision to shoot a “psychotic man [to prevent him] from driving away in a marked sheriff’s cruiser” was reasonable because of the serious harm that could have occurred if the suspect was allowed to flee in the stolen cruiser
- concluding the use of deadly force was reasonable, even though other less-lethal means of preventing the suspect’s escape may have existed, because “the police need not have taken that chance and hoped for the best.”
Written by the judges who cited it.
Distinguished
Distinguished by Zion v. Nassan, 283 F.R.D. 247 (2012)
The unusual factual circumstances at issue in Long are clearly distinguishable from those at issue in this case.
The opinion
FORRESTER, District Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
I respectfully dissent from the opinion of the majority in the action against Deputy Slaton.
To the recitation of the facts by the majority, I would add that Deputy Slaton had dealt with the deceased before without any major problem and that the shooting occurred in a fairly rural area several miles from Florence, Alabama.
As I understand the law, the use of deadly force is reasonable only where there is a serious threat of imminent or immediate physical harm to the officer or others. See, e.g., Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1, 11-12 , 105 S.Ct. 1694 , 85 L.Ed.2d 1 (1985); Beshers v. Harrison, 495 F.3d 1260, 1266-67 (11th Cir.2007); Robinson v. Arrugueta, 415 F.3d 1252, 1256-57 (11th Cir.2005); Vaughan v. Cox, 343 F.3d 1323, 1330 (11th Cir.2003); McCormick v. City of Fort Lauderdale, 333 F.3d 1234, 1246 (11th Cir.2003). I can find no arguable probable cause for such a belief in this case. To be sure, with the deceased in possession of a patrol car, the outcome of these events is uncertain, but the possibility that a nonviolent fleeing felon will later pose a threat of physical harm to others is remote and highly speculative.
I do not believe that this officer is entitled to qualified immunity either. Vaughan provides notice that seizing a fleeing felon in a vehicle by shooting him is unreasonable. Although there are differences between that case and this, Vaughan is not “fairly distinguishable.” See Vinyard v. Wilson, 311 F.3d 1340, 1351-53 (11th Cir.2002). In Vaughan , the truck was northbound on 1-85 between Newnan and Atlanta traveling at speeds exceeding eighty miles per hour. At one point it rammed a police vehicle which was attempting a rolling roadblock. These facts present circumstances more fraught with immediate threat than those in the instant case, and this court determined that a jury could find that the officers in Vaughan violated the suspect’s Fourth Amendment rights and were not entitled to qualified immunity. 1
. I concur in the majority opinion’s determination that the plaintiffs have failed to state a claim against Sheriff Ronnie Willis.