The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals again struck down a civil rights lawsuit targeting a Harris County constable’s deputy accused in the 2016 shooting death of Ashtian Barnes.
The Thursday ruling came several months after a unanimous Supreme Court revived the lawsuit and ordered the New Orleans-based appeals court to take a new look at the case and evaluate the totality of circumstances leading up to the deputy’s decision to shoot Barnes during a traffic stop, not only the split-second decision to do so.
That appeal to the nation’s highest court came after the 5th Circuit Court determined Harris County Precinct 5 Constable’s Deputy Roberto Felix Jr. would be protected by the “moment of threat doctrine,” allowing justices to only evaluate his decision to shoot and kill Barnes in the second the deputy felt his life was threatened.
The doctrine is a commonly used legal defense in excessive force cases against law enforcement.
The shooting happened April 28, 2016, when Barnes was pulled over by Felix on the Sam Houston Tollway in Houston while driving a rental car with a history of outstanding toll road violations, according to court documents. Dashboard video footage taken during the interaction shows the deputy approaching the vehicle. The door is swung open after Felix orders Barnes to step out of the car. The officer can be seen in the video then drawing his firearm after Barnes allegedly put the vehicle in gear to drive.
Within seconds, the vehicle began moving forward as Felix clung onto the driver’s side door, almost instantly discharging his weapon and killing Barnes. Barnes’ mother, Janice Hughes Barnes, filed a lawsuit against Felix and Harris County, arguing the deputy violated Ashtian Barnes’ Fourth Amendment right protecting him from excessive force and unreasonable search and seizure.
Supreme Court justices earlier this year weighed whether the appeals court used the appropriate standard to evaluate Felix’s actions. Justice Elena Kagan said the decision by the appeals court to evaluate the incident only in the moment of threat may have excluded a review of any action that could have created a danger necessitating deadly force.
The high court’s decision to revive Barnes’ lawsuit set a legal precedent for appellate courts that had argued they were bound by the moment-of-threat doctrine in their decision-making. But that standard was again tested when Judge Patrick Higginbotham of the 5th Circuit Court wrote in Thursday’s ruling that Barnes’ family failed to show that any constitutional violation occurred, adding that the “claims against the county failed.”
The latest decision cites a landmark 1977 Supreme Court case that holds police officers may order a driver to step out of their vehicle during traffic stops without violating their Fourth Amendment rights. Higginbotham wrote that the officer’s ability to separate a person from their vehicle is crucial in preventing high-speed car chases that can pose a threat to the officer’s own life and the surrounding community.
“It follows that the choice to use deadly force in such a situation is ‘presumptively reasonable’ when the officer has reason to believe that the suspect poses a threat of serious harm to the officer or to others,” Higginbotham wrote.
The Thursday decision, which claims Felix did what he was trained to do, asserts that Barnes’ family, the plaintiffs in the civil suit, failed to defeat the officer’s invocation of qualified immunity, a legal provision protecting police from liability in civil lawsuits.
Charles McCloud, a Washington-based attorney representing Felix, did not return several phone calls seeking comment.
Attorneys for Barnes’ family did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Great Job & the Team @ Houston Public Media Source link for sharing this story.
