Authored by: Lyndsey T. Stott
Abstract
When necessary, the human mind is capable of deciding how to respond to stimuli in less than 200 milliseconds, hence the term “split-second decision.” But what makes a split-second decision a good, or better yet, a reasonable one? On average, 1,769 people nationwide are injured each year by shootings at the hands of police officers. Over 55% of those injuries prove fatal, leading to nearly 1000 deaths per year. However, in 2021, only twenty-one officers were criminally charged in relation to shootings, which was a record high. Where criminal charges might not, and rarely do, follow a police officer shooting, numerous civil suits have been brought against officers based on theories of excessive force. These statistics and subsequent legal actions begged the question from the judiciary: what makes an officer’s sometimes split-second decision to shoot a civilian, reasonable?
The federal courts have been grappling with inconsistent answers to this question for over twenty-five years since the United States Supreme Court decided the landmark case, Graham v. Connor, where it held that “objective reasonableness” is the constitutional standard that governs claims of excessive force against defendant law enforcement officers, as such claims arise out of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. Prior to Graham, the Supreme Court, albeit obtusely, prescribed in Tennessee v. Garner that a “totality of circumstances” should be taken into account when analyzing whether a Fourth Amendment right had been violated or whether the alleged violation was reasonable, and thus, justified.
Since these decisions, some federal courts have narrowed the “totality of circumstances” standard. Some circuits have previously limited fact finders and courts to only consider the precise moment an officer may have realized or believed they were in danger, known in the Fifth Circuit as the “moment-of-threat” rule. Other federal courts have maintained the broader, all-things-considered-esque standard as mentioned in Graham and Garner, coined “the totality of circumstances.”
Recently, to address the circuit split, the Supreme Court decided Barnes v. Felix, resolving long-standing inconsistencies among the circuits regarding the appropriate time frame to use in tandem with the reasonableness standard applied in Fourth Amendment excessive force cases. The question in Barnes boiled down to timing and, thus, what circumstances may be taken into account when deciding whether a police officer was reasonable in their force: the moment the officer notices they may be in danger or instead, a plain reading of the “totality of the circumstances.”
This Comment examines how federal courts approached the reasonableness standard as it relates to excessive force and the Fourth Amendment protections from unreasonable search and seizure before the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Barnes.
American Journal of Trial Advocacy 