Case ID: f-appx_517/html/0574-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Pedro MIRAMONTES, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Officer KLEVOS; Officer Berger; Anaheim Police Department; Sgt. Freisen, Defendants-Appellees., Sgt. Preiser, Defendant.
    No. 11-56641.
    United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.
    Argued and Submitted April 17, 2013.
    Filed April 24, 2013.
    Margaret Moeser, Dawn Sestito, O’Mel-veny & Myers LLP, Los Angeles, CA, for Plaintiff-Appellant.
    Pedro Miramontes, pro se.
    Moses Wilbur Johnson, Esquire, Anaheim City Attorney’s Office, Anaheim, CA, for Defendants-Appellees.
    Before: NOONAN, O’SCANNLAIN, and N.R. SMITH, Circuit Judges.
   MEMORANDUM

Pedro Miramontes claims the district court abused its discretion by not instructing the jury to consider the potential availability of other methods of subduing him.

As Instruction 9.22 explains, however, “it is not error for a trial court to decline to instruct explicitly on the availability of ‘alternative courses of action’ ” if the whole of the jury instruction fairly and accurately covers the legal issues presented. See Brewer v. City of Napa, 210 F.3d 1093, 1097 (9th Cir.2000). That was the case here. The court instructed the jury to “consider all of the circumstances known to them on the scene,” in assessing what was “objectively reasonable.” This “general reasonableness/'totality of the circumstances’ instruction! ]” is appropriate “in an excessive force case, despite the plaintiffs request for more detailed instructions addressing the specific factors to be considered in the reasonableness calculus.” Id. at 1097; see also Fikes v. Cleghorn, 47 F.3d 1011, 1013-14 (9th Cir.1995).

Nor does the court’s decision to include five specific considerations adapted from Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 396-97, 109 S.Ct. 1865, 104 L.Ed.2d 443 (1989) render the instruction infirm. Mira-montes’s argument that the jury likely limited itself to those factors founders on the principle that “juries are presumed to follow the court’s instructions.” Brown v. Ornoski, 503 F.3d 1006, 1018 (9th Cir.2007). Not only did the instruction reference all the circumstances, but the list of the five factors was prefaced with the word “including.”

AFFIRMED. 
      
       This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by 9th Cir. R. 36-3.