CHADRIN LEE MULLENIX v. BEATRICE LUNA
Supreme Court of the United States, Per Curiam, Filed Nov. 9, 2015,
Qualified Immunity – Qualified immunity applied to police officer because no precedent clearly established that he was not allowed to shoot to disable a vehicle driven by a man who threatened to shoot police that approached

(Concur- Scalia – Would not call shooting at the vehicle application of deadly force)
(Dissent – Sotomayor – Because the actions were unreasonable, should lose qualified immunity)

Driver in car chase called dispatcher to tell her that he had a gun and would shoot police if they didn’t stop chasing him.
Officers set up spike strips to stop him, but another officer decided to fire at the vehicle with a rifle to disable it. The officer struck the driver several times, killing him. According to the USSC opinion, Mullenix fired 6 shots, 4 of which struck the suspect in the upper torso and none struck the engine/hood/radiator (the vehicle was driving at apx. 85 mph and Mullenix was firing from a highway overpass with 20′ elevation. No information given as to distance.)
From the dissent:
When Mullenix confronted his superior officer after the shooting, his first words were, “How’s that for proactive?”

Qualified Immunity – qualified immunity protects “all but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law.”

Qualified Immunity – Qualified Immunity protects officials from civil liability so long as their conduct “does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.” To be “clearly established,” existing precedent must have placed the statutory or constitutional question beyond debate.

Qualified Immunity – The dispositive question is “whether the violative nature of particular conduct is clearly established.” Courts should not defined “clearly established law” at a high level of generality.