RAY WHITE v. DANIEL T. PAULY
Supreme Court of the United States, Per Curiam, Jan. 9, 2017,
Qualified Immunity – An officer was immune from suit where no clearly defined law required an officer taking fire to give a warning before using deadly force.

Facts: Three New Mexico police officers, including Officer White, were investigating a late-night road rage incident. “The three agreed there was insufficient probable cause to arrest [the suspect]. Still, the officers decided to speak with [the suspect] to (1) get his side of the story, (2) ‘make sure nothing else happened,’ and (3) find out if he was intoxicated.”
Officer White stayed on-scene while two other officers tracked the suspect back to his house and approached it covertly with flashlights off. The occupants of the house noticed someone outside and called out, “who are you?” and “what do you want?”
“In response, Officers Mariscal and Truesdale laughed and responded: ‘Hey, (expletive), we got you surrounded. Come out or we’re coming in.’”
At this point, Officer White arrived at the house in time to hear one of the occupants say, “we have guns,” and see someone run to the back of the house. Officer White took cover behind a stone wall and one of the occupants “fired two shotgun blasts while screaming loudly.” The other occupant opened fire with a handgun from inside a window in the house. A gunfight ensued and White killed the man in the window.
The officers were sued and there was a disagreement with regard to whether the first officers identified themselves as police. Officer White claimed that he was entitled to immunity because it was reasonable for him to believe that the other two officers had already identified themselves before the gunfight.
The 10th Circuit disagreed, holding that “a reasonable person in the officers’ position should have understood their conduct would cause [the occupants] to defend their home.” They held Officer White liable because “a reasonable officer in White’s position would have known that, since the [occupants] could not have shot him unless he moved from his position behind a stone wall, he could not have used deadly force without first warning [the man with the handgun] to drop his weapon.”
The Supreme Court reversed, with respect to Officer White, because there is no clearly established requirement that an officer taking fire give a warning.

Qualified Immunity – A police officer has qualified immunity from suit as long as they “do not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.”
Qualified Immunity- Qualified Immunity protects “all but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law.”

Excessive Force- No clearly established federal law requires a reasonable officer who arrives late to an ongoing police action to assume that proper procedures, such as officer identification, have not already been followed.
From the Case: “No settled Fourth Amendment principle requires that officer to second-guess the earlier steps already taken by his or her fellow officers in instances like the one White confronted here.”