Decision here.
I don't like this one at all. Sometimes judges show that they have a surprisingly firm grasp on what we do, and sometimes they show that they have no clue what it's like on the street. This decision falls into the latter category.
Barrientos is a deputy sheriff in southern New Mexico. One day, he was investigating a shoplift of two 20-packs of beer. He had reviewed surveillance footage of the theft, and he was out looking for the suspects when he kept getting directed (either by dispatch or by other witnesses) to various places where the suspects might be. He had two loaded rifles in the front seat of his car, only one of which was secured in a gun lock, and the windows were rolled down to facilitate his search.
At some point during his search, he was out of his car after having made a traffic stop of a car which he thought was involved. The driver didn't match the suspect description and he had already let him go, but he had left his car running and unsecured like he normally would do during a traffic stop. While he was out of his car, someone started throwing beer bottles at him.
He found three suspects (two of whom appeared to be the suspects in the theft, and one of whom was a relative of his. This particular relative had gang associations and had apparently threatened to harm him in the past). He detained the three suspects at gunpoint.
Two of the suspects followed orders, either proning themselves out or kneeling down. The third, Dominguez, kept walking closer and closer to Barrientos. Finally, Dominguez lunged for Barrientos and tried to take away his gun. The two men struggled over the gun for a while, and during the struggle the weapon discharged and then malfunctioned. Barrientos tried to tase Dominguez, but the taser had no effect. Dominguez ran towards Barrientos' patrol car (which was unlocked, running, and had an unsecured AR15 in the front seat). Barrientos cleared his handgun's malfunction, chased Dominguez, and caught up to him as he was getting into the car, tried to take the keys out of the ignition (unsuccessfully), the engine was revving, and Dominguez shifted the car into reverse. Barrientos shot Dominguez once in the chest, and Dominguez slumped over.
Barrientos took a few steps back, so that he was no longer afraid that he was going to be run over by the car. The car was now rolling back, with Dominguez slumped over in the driver's seat, and with an unsecured AR15 right next to him. Barrientos shot Dominguez six more times. The car came to a stop in a nearby field. Dominguez died, and his family filed a 1983 suit against Barrientos, alleging that he violated Dominguez's Fourth Amendment rights by using unreasonable force.
Barrientos moved to dismiss the suit, claiming qualified immunity. The district court ruled that he was entitled to qualified immunity for the first time that he shot Dominguez, but not for the six additional shots. The court's reasoning was that Barrientos had moved away from the car and was no longer in danger of being run over, and he did not have any indication that Dominguez was armed, and that it was debatable whether or not he had reason to believe that Dominguez still posed a threat. So the court ruled that under these facts, a reasonable jury could find that Barrientos violated Dominguez's Fourth Amendment rights.
That ruling seems all kinds of jacked up, I know. Barrientos had just spent a minute and a half fighting for his life against a suspect who tried to disarm him, and we are all trained to recognize that someone trying to disarm us is trying to kill us. That same suspect was now in a position where he had access to a weapon which was vastly superior to the one Barrientos was using... if Dominguez actually deployed the AR15, there pretty much isn't shit Barrientos could have done. As far as I can see, the only intelligent thing for Barrientos to do was to keep shooting until he was good and goddamn sure that Dominguez was no threat at all. But the court didn't see it that way.
Barrientos appealed the court's decision. His appeal included three arguments: first, he argued that the court erred in analyzing the last six gunshots separately from the first one (he didn't argue that subsequent shots can never be analyzed separately, only that this case didn't merit that sort of microscopic analysis). Second, her argued that the district court did not sufficiently take into account the danger that Dominguez posed. The Tenth Circuit ruled that both of those arguments were factual disputes rather than legal disputes. For qualified immunity purposes, an appellate court generally has to defer to the factual findings of a lower court (as opposed to legal findings, which the appellate court can change as it sees fit). So the Tenth Circuit held that it didn't have the authority to reverse the lower court's decision on those two arguments.
Barrientos' third argument was that even if he had violated Dominguez's rights, whatever right he violated was not clearly established. The Tenth ruled that according to the factual findings of the district court, a jury could find that Barrientos had shot Dominguez six times when he did not have any reason to believe that Dominguez posed a threat, which any reasonable officer would have known to be a violation of Dominguez's Fourth Amendment rights.
The denial of qualified immunity was upheld. This case could still go either way at trial, but it's not off to a great start.
No comments:
Post a Comment