{"id":59034,"date":"2024-10-04T12:55:00","date_gmt":"2024-10-04T17:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=59034"},"modified":"2024-10-07T12:56:35","modified_gmt":"2024-10-07T17:56:35","slug":"scotus-grants-cert-in-excessive-force-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=59034","title":{"rendered":"SCOTUS grants cert in excessive force case"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Barnes v. Felix, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.supremecourt.gov\/search.aspx?filename=\/docket\/docketfiles\/html\/public\/23-1239.html\">23-1239<\/a> (granted Oct. 4, 2024):<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p>The Fourth Amendment prohibits a police officer from using \u201cunreasonable\u201d force. U.S. Const. amend. IV. In Graham v. Connor, this Court held that reasonableness depends on \u201cthe totality of the circumstances.\u201d 490 U.S. 386, 396 (1989) (quotation marks omitted). But four circuits\u2014the Second, Fourth, Fifth, and Eighth\u2014cabin Graham. Those circuits evaluate whether a Fourth Amendment violation occurred under the \u201cmoment of the threat doctrine,\u201d which evaluates the reasonableness of an officer\u2019s actions only in the narrow window when the officer\u2019s safety was threatened, and not based on events that precede the moment of the threat. In contrast, eight circuits\u2014the First, Third, Sixth, Seventh, Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh, and D.C. Circuits\u2014reject the moment of the threat doctrine and follow the totality of the circumstances approach, including evaluating the officer\u2019s actions leading up to the use of force.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the decision below, Judge Higginbotham concurred in his own majority opinion, explaining that the minority approach \u201clessens the Fourth Amendment\u2019s protection of the American public\u201d and calling on this Court \u201cto resolve the circuit divide over the application of a doctrine deployed daily across this country.\u201d Pet. App. 10a-16a (Higginbotham, J., concurring). The question presented\u2014which has divided twelve circuits\u2014is: Whether courts should apply the moment of the threat doctrine when evaluating an excessive force claim under the Fourth Amendment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Restated per SCOTUSBlog: \u201cWhether courts should apply the \u2018moment of the threat\u2019 doctrine, which looks only at the narrow window in which a police officer\u2019s safety was threatened to determine whether his actions were reasonable, in evaluating claims that police officers used excessive force.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Barnes v. Felix, 23-1239 (granted Oct. 4, 2024):<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59034"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59034\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59035,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59034\/revisions\/59035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}