Opinion ID: 3026437
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Challenge of Preserving “Totality of

Text: Circumstances” Review As this case demonstrates, trying to separate the ultimate from the underlying questions is no easy matter and can have a disturbing, unintended consequence. It can undermine the basic principle that both the threshold constitutional question and the immunity question are to be decided on the totality of the circumstances. Fundamental fairness dictates a totality-of-thecircumstances review, since the test for reasonableness “is not capable of precise definition or mechanical application,” Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520, 559 (1979). It depends on all of the chaotic details that emerge in real time in real life.13 Yet the tightly intertwined issues of fact and law, it may be permissible to utilize a jury in an advisory capacity, see infra at sec. III.C., but responsibility for answering that ultimate question remains with the court. 13 We have here a fundamental parting of the ways with the dissent. While our colleague sees this case as coming down to, to use her analogy, one domino in the sequence of events, post at 12, we feel compelled to recognize that reality is a 27 method that we and many other courts have taken to address the mixed legal and factual questions posed by the Saucier test cannot easily, perhaps cannot ever, capture those circumstances in their totality. When one picks and chooses a few questions to pose to a jury to ferret out historical facts, staying away from asking the broader question of what constitutes reasonable behavior under those facts, one cannot help but focus attention on some events to the diminution or exclusion of others. In short, a totality-of-the-circumstances test is replaced by a test focusing on those few circumstances featured in the questions a court is able and willing to articulate. The District Court clearly saw that problem in this case. As quoted before, the judge observed that the analysis in this case could not properly be shrunk into the few moments immediately before Klem shot Curley, but instead must be decided in light of all the events which had taken place over the course of the entire evening. Post-trial Opinion, 2006 WL 414093, at . The desire to avoid the kind of difficulty presented here is perhaps what has motivated other courts to sanction the alternative approach of permitting the question of objective reasonableness to go to juries. See Sloman, 21 F.3d at 1468 (“[S]ending the factual issues to the jury but reserving to the judge the ultimate ‘reasonable officer’ determination leads to serious logistical difficulties. Special jury verdicts would unnecessarily good deal more complicated than the simple causality evident in falling dominoes. 28 complicate easy cases, and might be unworkable in complicated ones.”). In spite of the foregoing problem inherent in articulating specific questions to address factual issues, our most current precedent counsels that course.14 However, while the judge must make the ultimate determination regarding the objective reasonableness of challenged behavior, that does not mean that the use of an advisory jury is foreclosed. We need not consider the propriety of such a step under the circumstances presented here, though, because the jury in this case was not acting in an advisory capacity. The Court put to the jury the question of the objective reasonableness of Klem’s actions, and the Court upheld the verdict rendered. 14 We note that in the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Scott, 127 S. Ct. 1769 (2007), the Court stated that, because the case “was decided on summary judgment, there [had] not yet been factual findings by a judge or jury ... .” Id. at 1774 (emphasis added). Without wanting to read too much into that statement, since it may refer to nothing more than a case in which the parties waive any right to a jury, it appears the Court at least contemplated a circumstance where a judge may resolve factual issues. Certainly the dissent in Scott was concerned about judicial fact finding. See id. at 1781 (Stevens, J., dissenting) (“Relying on a de novo review of a videotape ..., eight of the jurors on this Court reach a verdict that differs from the views of the judges on both the District Court and the Court of Appeals who are surely more familiar with the hazards of driving on Georgia roads than we are.”). 29