Accidental shooting was a seizure; officer thought he pulled Taser

Accidentally shooting a man fleeing from an arrest when the officer thought he pulled out a Taser is unquestionably a stop with force “intentionally applied” under Brendlin. The case was remanded for further discovery on the officer’s training on the use of handguns and Tasers for qualified immunity purposes. Henry v. Purnell, 501 F.3d 374 (4th Cir. 2007):

Having identified the relevant facts, we now turn to the question of whether these facts establish that Purnell seized Henry within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. “A person is seized by the police and thus entitled to challenge the government’s action under the Fourth Amendment when the officer, by means of physical force or show of authority, terminates or restrains his freedom of movement, through means intentionally applied.” Brendlin v. California, ___ U.S. ___, 127 S. Ct. 2400, 2405 (2007) (citations and internal punctuation omitted) (emphasis in original). Purnell unquestionably terminated Henry’s freedom of movement by means of physical force when he shot him; however, he contends that because he intended to shoot Henry with the Taser, rather than the Glock, he did not terminate Henry’s freedom of movement “through means intentionally applied.” The district court rejected this argument, as do we.

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We are not presented with a case where police stopped someone by mere happenstance, such as the passerby who is pinned when a police car slips its brake, or by the unintended consequences of an attempted seizure, such as the fleeing suspect who crashes his vehicle. Instead, the undisputed evidence in the record establishes that Purnell’s specific intent was to stop Henry from fleeing by means of firing a weapon, and Henry was in fact stopped by the very instrumentality (i.e., the Glock) that Purnell set in motion. We recognize that Purnell did not intend to use the Glock, but we are also mindful of the Brower Court’s admonition that we should not draw too fine a line in determining whether the means that terminate a person’s freedom of movement is the very means that an officer intended. If, as the Court noted, a seizure would occur when a person is stopped by the accidental discharge of a gun that an officer meant to use only as a club, then we believe that a seizure surely occurred here where Purnell intended to stop Henry by firing a weapon at him and succeeded in doing so. Accordingly, we affirm the portion of the district court’s order finding that Purnell seized Henry. See 428 F. Supp. 2d at 395-96.