ANDREW KISELA v. AMY HUGHES
Supreme Court of the United States, Per Curiam, April 2, 2018,
Qualified Immunity – Excessive Force – An officer was entitled to qualified immunity where no clearly established law at the time required officers to refrain from using deadly force against a woman who was armed with a large knife; was within striking distance of the victim; ignored the officers’ orders to drop the weapon; and the situation unfolded in less than a minute.

(Dissent – Sotomayor with Ginsburg – I think my feelings should override existing precedent and need no expert to point out the fallacy in my opinion that someone with a knife at her side is not dangerous)

Sotomayor repeatedly emphasizes that the suspect was holding the knife at her side with the sharpened side “pointed away” from the possible victim as if this makes the knife less dangerous. Who the hell holds a knife with the sharpened side facing the front? (if this was the “point” of the knife, that would make more sense… almost… but that’s not what she means here. She also finds that the suspect, recently seen stabbing trees, walking toward a possible victim with a knife in her hand did not remotely suggest criminal activity and that the officers were wrong to “hastily” draw their guns and order her to drop the knife.
She emphasizes that the “victim” later testified that she didn’t feel threatened (though glossing over the “later” part) and that the suspect “may not have been aware” of the officers. These late, subjective possibilities are irrelevant to qualified immunity analysis unless put into an objective, reasonable-officer calculus. Moreover, “although the officers were in uniform, they never verbally identified themselves as law enforcement officers.” That’s… kinda the point of the uniform. Once shot, the suspect looked at the officers and said “Why’d you shoot me?” She did not say, “who are you? when did you get here? where did you come from?”

Facts:
In 2010, Tucson, Arizona police received a call that a woman was outside with a kitchen knife hacking at a tree.
When officers arrived, they were flagged down by the caller and given a description of the woman. The caller told police that the woman had been acting erratically.
Police began canvasing the area when they spotted a woman, later identified as Sharon Chadwick, standing next to a car in the driveway of a nearby house. A chain-link fence with a locked gate separated Chadwick from the officers. The officers then saw another woman, Hughes, emerge from the house carrying a large knife at her side. Hughes matched the descriptionof the woman who had been seen hacking a tree. Hughes walked toward Chadwick and stopped no more than six feet from her.
All three officers drew their guns. At least twice they told Hughes to drop the knife. At some point, Chadwick said “take it easy” to both Hughes and the officers. Hughes appeared calm, but she did not acknowledge the officers’ presence or drop the knife.
One of the officers then dropped to the ground and shot Hughes four times through the fence. Less than a minute had passed from the moment the officers saw Chadwick to the moment she was shot.
The officers then jumped the fence, handcuffed Hughes, and called paramedics, who transported her to a hospital. There she was treated for non-life-threatening injuries. After the shooting, the officers discovered that Chadwick and Hughes were roommates, that Hughes had a history of mental illness, and that Hughes had been upset with Chadwick over a $20 debt.
All three of the officers later said that at the time of the shooting they subjectively believed Hughes to be a threat to Chadwick.
Chadwick (the roommate) said that she did not feel endangered at any time. Based on her experience as Hughes’ roommate, Chadwick stated that Hughes “occasionally has episodes in which she acts inappropriately,” but “she is only seeking attention.”
Hughes sued police for excessive force.
The trial court found that the officers were protected by qualified immunity, but the Ninth Circuit reversed the trial court and found that the officers were not entitled to qualified immunity because they should have known better.
The officers then requested review by the Supreme Court.

Held: The Supreme Court reversed and upheld dismissal of the lawsuit. Even assuming that the officers used excessive force, they are still protected by qualified immunity.

Use of Force – Factors – The Supreme Court in Graham v. Connor laid out several factors that courts may consider in deciding whether force was reasonable (known as the “Graham Factors”):
– the severity of the crime at issue
– whether the suspect poses an immediate threat to the safety of the officers or others
– whether the suspect is actively resisting arrest
– whether the suspect is attempting to evade arrest by flight

Note: Under Fourth Circuit law, our federal courts will look at the situation as a whole in determining whether officers were reasonable in using force and not just limit it to those factors. Additional aspects such as the age of the suspect and the location where force is used may also be considered.

Use of Force – “The reasonableness of a particular use of force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight”

Qualified Immunity – An officer is immune from suit as long as his conduct “does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights”

Qualified Immunity – Law is “clearly established” when a court opinion has placed the issue “beyond debate.”

From the Case: “This Court has repeatedly told courts—and the Ninth Circuit in particular—not to define clearly established law at a high level of generality.”

Qualified Immunity – Excessive Force – “Use of excessive force is an area of the law “in which the result depends very much on the facts of each case, and thus police officers are entitled to qualified immunity unless existing precedent squarely governs the specific facts at issue.”

Qualified Immunity – Excessive Force – The general rules set forth in Tennessee v. Garner and Graham v. Connor do not by themselves create clearly established law outside of an obvious case.

Qualified Immunity – An officer “cannot be said to have violated a clearly established right unless the right’s contours were sufficiently definite that any reasonable official in the defendant’s shoes would have understood that he was violating it.”

From the Case: The shooting officer “says he shot Hughes because, although the officers themselves were in no apparent danger, he believed she was a threat to Chadwick. Kisela had mere seconds to assess the potential danger to Chadwick. He was confronted with a woman who had just been seen hacking a tree with a large kitchen knife and whose behavior was erratic enough to cause a concerned bystander to call 911 and then flag down Kisela and Garcia. Kisela was separated from Hughes and Chadwick by a chain-link fence; Hughes had moved to within a few feet of Chadwick; and she failed to acknowledge at least two commands to drop the knife. Those commands were loud enough that Chadwick, who was standing next to Hughes, heard them. This is far from an obvious case in which any competent officer would have known that shooting Hughes to protect Chadwick would violate the Fourth Amendment.”