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Accidental shooting of handcuffed suspect subject to reasonableness inquiry

By John Wesley Hall, Jr.

A case "remarkably similar on its facts to that faced by the Fourth Circuit in Henry v. Purnell, 501 F.3d 374 (4th Cir. 2007)," involved a handcuffed arrestee who the defendant officer was attempting to Taser and shot with a Glock instead. Here, however, the arrestee died. The inquiry is reasonableness, but that question was not decided by the district court, so the case is remanded. Torres v. City of Madera, 2008 U.S. App. LEXIS 9648 (9th Cir. May 5, 2008): Henry concluded, and we agree, that five factors were relevant to the reasonableness determination: (1) the nature of the training the officer had received to prevent incidents like this from happening; (2) whether the officer acted in accordance with that training; (3) whether following that training would have alerted the officer that he was holding a handgun; (4) whether the defendant's conduct heightened the officer's sense of danger; and (5) whether the defendant's conduct caused the officer to act with undue haste and inconsistently with that training...continue to full post

Full post as published by Fourth Amendment on May 06, 2008 (boomark / email).