A unanimous Supreme Court last revived a civil rights lawsuit against a Texas police officer who shot a man to death during a traffic stop over unpaid tolls.
The justices ordered the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to take a new look at the case of Ashtian Barnes, who died in his rental car in April 2016 on the shoulder of the Sam Houston Tollway in Houston.
Barnes was shot by Officer Roberto Felix Jr., who jumped on the sill of the driver’s door of Barnes’ car as it began to pull away from the stop. Felix fired twice in two seconds because he “reasonably feared for his life,” his lawyers wrote in their Supreme Court brief.
Lower courts had dismissed the excessive force lawsuit filed against Felix by Barnes’ mother, Janice Hughes. The district court granted summary judgment to Felix under a narrow interpretation of the Fourth Amendment known as the “moment of threat” rule.
The rule, adopted by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, limited the analysis of whether the shooting was reasonable to the roughly two seconds that Barnes’ car was in motion with Felix on board. The appellate court affirmed the lower court’s ruling.
The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the narrow examination of Barnes and Felix’s encounter prevented the district court from examining all of the circumstances leading up to the shooting. Writing for the unanimous court, Associate Justice Elena Kagan likened the “moment of threat” rule to putting on “chronological blinders,” preventing courts from examining use-of-force cases with a context-sensitive approach.
Kagan wrote for the court that courts should look at the “totality of the circumstances” to evaluate the suit against Felix. The standard embraced by the court Thursday often will be friendlier to plaintiffs in civil rights cases.
U.S. appellate courts had been divided on the “moment of threat” doctrine, with only four of the nation’s 13 circuit courts of appeal actively applying it, Barnes’ attorneys noted in a legal filing.
The Supreme Court’s decision requires the Fifth Circuit to reexamine Barnes’ case under the broader standard set forth in its opinion. However, the justices chose not to opine on the issue of how an officer’s own actions might create a dangerous scenario.
“While the situation at the precise time of the shooting will often matter most, earlier facts and circumstances may bear on how a reasonable officer would have understood and responded to later ones,” Kagan wrote.