Opinion ID: 1033644
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: “Segmented” Analysis

Text: Barrientos first argues the district court erred in analyzing shots two through seven separately from the first shot. Barrientos nominally frames this argument as a legal issue, asserting that segregating the shots as the district court did constitutes a “misapplication of the totality of the circumstances standard” which is applied when analyzing excessive force claims. See Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 396 (1989) (holding that determining whether force was excessive under the Fourth Amendment “requires careful attention to the facts and circumstances of each particular case, including the severity of the crime at issue, whether the suspect poses an immediate threat to the safety of the officers or others, and whether he is actively resisting arrest or attempting to evade arrest by flight”); Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1, 3 (1985) (holding deadly force may not be used “to prevent the escape of an apparently unarmed suspected felon . . . unless it is necessary to prevent the escape and the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical -12- injury to the officer or others”). Ultimately, however, Barrientos’s argument depends upon a challenge to the facts the district court concluded a reasonable jury could infer based upon the evidence in the summary judgment record. For example, Barrientos asserts the district court’s use of a segmented approach was error “when the facts of the incident are that Barrientos and the public were placed in danger from the moment he was attacked by the decedent until the time that Barrientos was completely sure that neither he nor the public were in further danger.” Appellant’s Br. at 19 (emphasis added). The district court relied on Thomas for the proposition that “circumstances may change within seconds eliminating the justification for deadly force.” 607 F.3d at 666; accord Waterman v. Batton, 393 F.3d 471, 481 (4th Cir. 2005) (“We therefore hold that force justified at the beginning of an encounter is not justified even seconds later if the justification for the initial force has been eliminated.”). Barrientos does not take issue with the district court’s reliance on Thomas or Waterman as an abstract legal matter, i.e., he does not argue it is never appropriate in an incident involving the firing of multiple shots by a police officer to analyze the shots separately if the circumstances so warrant. Instead, Barrientos strenuously argues that the circumstances of this case are not amenable to such analysis. Specifically, he argues that, unlike the situation in Waterman, “the threat of harm caused by the decedent to Barrientos and to nearby community members existed for the duration of the approximately ninety . . . second -13- incident.” Appellant’s Br. at 22. The district court, however, concluded the evidence was sufficient for a reasonable jury to draw a contrary inference: Although in some circumstances multiple shots fired in a matter of seconds should be grouped together in the qualified immunity analysis, this case is different. Here, there is evidence that Deputy Barrientos had time between the first shot and the following shots to take a few steps back to get out of the way of the car, to assess the situation, and to know that Mr. Dominguez had slumped and may not have presented a continuing danger to himself or to the public. Mem. Op. & Order at 16. Because Barrientos’s first argument on appeal cannot reasonably be understood as anything other than an attack on these conclusions of the district court, this court lacks jurisdiction to consider it. Fogarty, 523 F.3d at 1154; Clanton, 129 F.3d at 1153.