Court Opinion

ID: 9363082
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-01-13 18:57:02.223259+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:15:28.492665
License: Public Domain

FOR PUBLICATION

   UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
        FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

PAULETTE SMITH, individually and          No. 20-56254
as Successor in Interest to Albert
Dorsey, deceased,                            D.C. No.
                                          2:19-cv-05370-
              Plaintiff-Appellee,            CAS-JC

 v.
                                            OPINION
EDWARD AGDEPPA, an individual,

              Defendant-Appellant,

and

CITY OF LOS ANGELES, a
municipal entity; DOES, 1 through 10,

              Defendants.

      Appeal from the United States District Court
          for the Central District of California
      Christina A. Snyder, District Judge, Presiding

         Argued and Submitted March 16, 2022
              San Francisco, California

                Filed December 30, 2022
2                         SMITH V. AGDEPPA

    Before: Morgan Christen and Daniel A. Bress, Circuit
        Judges, and Gary Feinerman, * District Judge.

                   Opinion by Judge Christen;
                    Dissent by Judge Bress

                          SUMMARY **

    The panel affirmed the district court’s order denying, on
summary judgment, qualified immunity to a police officer in
an action brought pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 alleging
defendant used unreasonable deadly force when he shot and
killed Albert Dorsey during a failed arrest in the men’s
locker room of a gym.
    Before the district court, defendant Officer Agdeppa
maintained that he killed Dorsey because Dorsey was
pummeling Agdeppa’s partner, and Agdeppa feared
Dorsey’s next blow would kill her. Agdeppa also claimed
that he yelled “stop” before shooting, but no such warning
could be heard on the officers’ body-cam recordings.
    The district court properly denied Agdeppa’s request for
qualified immunity for two reasons. First, the district court
recognized that a reasonable jury could reject the police
officers’ account of the shooting because there were
significant discrepancies between their versions of events

*
 The Honorable Gary Feinerman, United States District Judge for the
Northern District of Illinois, sitting by designation.
**
   This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has
been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.
                       SMITH V. AGDEPPA                      3

and other evidence in the record. Second, this court has long
held that the Fourth Amendment requires officers to warn
before using deadly force when practicable. The defense
cannot argue that it was not possible for Agdeppa to give
Dorsey a deadly force warning because Agdeppa’s sworn
statements show that he had time to tell Dorsey to
“stop.” The encounter lasted approximately four minutes
after the officers first attempted to handcuff Dorsey, and the
officers tased Dorsey at least five times during that
interval. Agdeppa never claimed that he warned Dorsey that
he would switch from using his taser to using his firearm if
Dorsey did not submit to being handcuffed, nor did he argue
that it was impracticable to do so. The district court
correctly ruled that a jury could decide that Agdeppa’s use
of deadly force violated clearly established law.
    Dissenting, Judge Bress stated that the two police
officers in this case found themselves in a violent
confrontation with a large, combative suspect, who ignored
their repeated orders to stop resisting and failed to respond
to numerous taser deployments. After the suspect’s assault
on the officers intensified and he wrested one of the officers’
tasers into his own hands, one officer shot the suspect to end
the aggression. The split-second decision officers made here
presented a classic case for qualified immunity. The
majority’s decision otherwise was contrary to law and
requires officers to hesitate in situations in which decisive
action, even if leading to the regrettable loss of human life,
can be necessary to protect their own.
4                     SMITH V. AGDEPPA

                        COUNSEL

Kevin E. Gilbert (argued) and Carolyn M. Aguilar, Orbach
Huff & Henderson LLP, Pleasanton, California; for
Defendants-Appellant.
Edward M. Lyman III (argued), Brian T. Dunn, and James
Bryant, The Cochran Firm, Los Angeles, California; Megan
R. Gyongyos, Carpenter Zuckerman & Rowley LLP,
Beverly Hills, California; for Plaintiff-Appellee.

                        OPINION

CHRISTEN, Circuit Judge:

    Edward Agdeppa, a police officer in Los Angeles, shot
and killed Albert Dorsey during a failed arrest in the men’s
locker room of a gym. Before the district court, Officer
Agdeppa maintained that he killed Dorsey because Dorsey
was pummeling Agdeppa’s partner, and Agdeppa feared
Dorsey’s next blow would kill her. Agdeppa also claimed
that he yelled “stop” before shooting, but no such warning
can be heard on the officers’ body-cam recordings. Dorsey’s
mother, Paulette Smith, sued Agdeppa for his allegedly
unreasonable use of deadly force. The district court denied
Agdeppa’s motion for summary judgment on qualified
immunity grounds, and Agdeppa timely appealed.
    The district court properly denied Agdeppa’s request for
qualified immunity for two reasons. First, the district court
recognized that a reasonable jury could reject the officers’
account of the shooting because there were significant
discrepancies between their versions of events and other
                       SMITH V. AGDEPPA                       5

evidence in the record. Second, we have long held that the
Fourth Amendment requires officers to warn before using
deadly force when practicable. See, e.g., Gonzalez v. City of
Anaheim, 747 F.3d 789, 794 (9th Cir. 2014) (en banc);
Harris v. Roderick, 126 F.3d 1189, 1201, 1204 (9th Cir.
1997). The defense cannot argue that it was not possible for
Agdeppa to give Dorsey a deadly force warning because
Agdeppa’s sworn statements show that he had time to tell
Dorsey to “stop.” The encounter lasted approximately four
minutes after the officers first attempted to handcuff Dorsey,
and the officers tased Dorsey at least five times during that
interval. Agdeppa never claimed that he warned Dorsey that
he would switch from using his taser to using his firearm if
Dorsey did not submit to being handcuffed, nor did he argue
that it was impracticable to do so. The district court correctly
ruled that a jury could decide Agdeppa’s use of deadly force
violated clearly established law. We therefore affirm the
district court’s order denying summary judgment.
                               I.
    On the morning of October 29, 2018, Agdeppa and his
partner Officer Perla Rodriguez responded to a Hollywood
gym to investigate calls that someone was trespassing and
engaging in disruptive conduct. Both officers activated their
body-worn cameras, and followed a gym employee into the
men’s locker room. The staff member who met the officers
told them, “We have a gentleman who is a little bit irate and
he’s not listening. He’s already hurting a few members and
he’s also assaulted security as well.”
    The officers encountered Dorsey in the shower area of
the locker room, where they spent several minutes ordering
Dorsey to get dressed, to turn off his music, and to leave the
gym. In response, Dorsey ignored the officers, walked back
6                       SMITH V. AGDEPPA

and forth across the room to look at himself in the mirror,
slowly dried his body with a towel, and danced to the music
on his phone, raising his middle finger toward Agdeppa.
    Agdeppa and Rodriguez then attempted to handcuff still-
naked Dorsey, who resisted the officers’ attempts by tensing
up and pulling his arms away. Agdeppa managed to place
one handcuff onto Dorsey’s right wrist, but the body-cam
videos show that, for roughly a minute and twenty seconds,
Dorsey used his size to thwart the smaller officers’ attempts
to handcuff him. As Dorsey resisted, both officers’ body-
cams were knocked from their uniforms onto the locker-
room floor. While the next three-or-so minutes are not
visible on video, the body-cams continued to record audio.
    Agdeppa alleges that after the body-cams fell to the
floor, the locker room struggle escalated and turned violent.
Agdeppa and Rodriguez assert that Dorsey struck Rodriguez
in the face with his elbow as he pulled away from the
officers, and Agdeppa warned Dorsey that he would tase him
if he did not submit to handcuffing. But Dorsey continued
to resist, and in the officers’ telling, he began swinging at the
officers after Rodriguez fired the darts from her taser at
Dorsey’s back. 1 Both officers also attested that they used
their tasers in “stun” mode several times as Dorsey became
increasingly aggressive. In his deposition testimony and
affidavit submitted in support of his summary judgment
motion, Agdeppa alleged that Dorsey repeatedly struck him
on the face and knocked him backward into a wall,
disorienting him and causing him to drop his taser.

1
  The autopsy reported a single taser dart wound in Dorsey’s midline
central back.
                       SMITH V. AGDEPPA                       7

    Agdeppa claims that as he recovered from his
disorientation, he witnessed Dorsey “straddling” Rodriguez
and “pummeling” her head and face with a “flurry of
punches” as she lay on the floor in a fetal position. Agdeppa
alleged that Dorsey appeared to be trying to kill Rodriguez
in a “vicious[] and violent[]” attack and he “believed that the
next punch would likely kill her.” In his affidavit, Agdeppa
stated that he “unholstered and drew [his] service weapon”
and “gave Dorsey a verbal warning, stating words to the
effect that Dorsey needed to stop.” Agdeppa alleged that
Dorsey instead “continued to pummel” Rodriguez with her
taser in his hand, so from a distance of six-to-eight feet away,
Agdeppa fired five shots to stop Dorsey, who “began to fall
backwards and away” from Rodriguez as Agdeppa fired the
final shot.
    Smith disputes Agdeppa’s account of the shooting.
Dorsey cannot testify because he is dead, but in its decision
denying summary judgment, the district court identified
several sources of evidence that conflict with the officers’
version of events.
     The district court explained, “a rational fact finder could
find that both officers’ body-worn camera footage [is]
consistent with [plaintiff’s] account, rather than Agdeppa’s.”
Video from the officers’ body-cams shows that during the
first several minutes of the encounter, Dorsey refused to
comply with the officers’ instructions to get dressed, leave
the locker room, and submit his arms for handcuffing. After
the video ends, the audio-only portion of the body-cam
recording cannot shed any light on where Agdeppa and
Dorsey were standing or what they were doing, but banging
8                         SMITH V. AGDEPPA

sounds and the sound of tasers deploying are audible. 2
Agdeppa claims that he yelled for Dorsey to “stop” before
escalating from his taser to his gun, but as the district court
recognized, that warning cannot be heard on the audio.
    Bystander-witness statements also contradicted
Agdeppa’s story. The gym’s security guards were present
during part of the encounter and they provided statements
for the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners’
internal investigation of the shooting. The Commissioners
found the officers’ tactics warranted a finding of
Administrative Disapproval, and that Agdeppa’s use of
deadly force was unreasonable. The officers’ actions were
deemed inconsistent with the Department’s deadly force
policy because the officers’ “inappropriate tactical decision-
making” and “series of substandard tactical decisions”
prevented the officers from “respond[ing] effectively using
non-lethal and less-lethal force.” The Commissioners’
report did not attach the guards’ statements, but the district
court correctly recognized from the report’s narrative that
one of the guards attested that Dorsey was holding
Agdeppa’s arm when the shots were fired. The district court
recognized that “if introduced at trial, this evidence would
impeach Agdeppa’s credibility because, according to
Agdeppa, he fired from six to eight feet away as Dorsey
stood or hunched over Rodriguez.”
   The security guards’ accounts differed from the officers’
in several respects, including the number of shots that

2
 The dissent purports to know what is occurring in the moments leading
up to the shooting, attributing “pained groaning” and “grunting” to the
officers. The district court made no findings of this sort and, absent
speculation, grunting sounds do not tell us what was occurring before
Agdeppa drew his firearm.
                           SMITH V. AGDEPPA                             9

Agdeppa fired, the number of volleys that Agdeppa fired,
whether Dorsey reached for Agdeppa’s firearm, and whether
Dorsey was holding Agdeppa’s wrist until after the second
shot was fired. To be sure, the guards described a struggle
between Dorsey and the officers, but the question for the
fact-finder will be what happened in the moments before the
shooting, and as the Commissioners’ report noted, the gym’s
surveillance video shows that one of the guards was not
present in the locker room at the time of the shooting and the
other was “in the process of exiting the locker room.” 3
    Significantly, the Commissioners recognized that the
officers’ actions are not to be judged with 20/20 hindsight,
their report incorporated the framework for evaluating
excessive force cases set out in Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S.
386 (1989), along with Departmental policies, and it
concluded that Agdeppa’s use of lethal force was

3
  The Commissioners’ report is in summary form and “does not reflect
the entirety of the extensive investigation.” It refers to other evidence
and witness statements, but they are not attached to the report and do not
appear to have been part of the district court’s record. The vantage point
from which the guards made their detailed observations cannot be
determined on our record. On remand, the parties will have an
opportunity to engage in discovery. Whether the guards’ testimony is
ultimately deemed credible will be a question for the fact-finder.
10                         SMITH V. AGDEPPA

unreasonable. 4 Dorsey resisted arrest, but nothing suggested
that he had committed a serious crime before the officers
physically engaged with him in an attempt to apply
handcuffs. The district court recognized that there was no
danger he was concealing a weapon because he was not
wearing any clothing, and he did not present a flight risk.
The Commissioners concluded that Agdeppa’s use of deadly
force was unreasonable because after a struggle ensued,
“there was no exigency that required the officers to stay
physically engaged with [Dorsey]”:
          Once the officers had initiated physical
          contact with [Dorsey], it was readily apparent
          that [Dorsey’s] greater size and strength, in
          concert with his noncompliant behavior,
          would make it difficult, if not impossible, for
          the officers to accomplish their goal of
          handcuffing him. At that time during the
          incident, there was no exigency that required
          the officers to stay physically engaged with
          [Dorsey]. Nevertheless, the officers did not
          take the opportunity to disengage from their

4
    The Commissioners cited an oft-quoted passage from Graham:

          The reasonableness of a particular use of force must be
          judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on
          the scene, rather that with the 20/20 vision of
          hindsight. [. . .] The calculus of reasonableness must
          embody allowance for the fact that police officers are
          often forced to make split-second judgments—in
          circumstances that are tense, uncertain and rapidly
          evolving—about the amount of force that is necessary
          in a particular situation.

Graham, 490 U.S. at 396–97.
                       SMITH V. AGDEPPA                     11

       physical struggle and redeploy in order to
       allow for the assembly of sufficient
       resources.    Rather, the officers stayed
       engaged as the situation continued to
       escalate, culminating in injurious assaults on
       both officers and the ultimate use of deadly
       force by Officer [Agdeppa].

    The record also contains physical evidence that conflicts
with Agdeppa’s story. Agdeppa argued that it was necessary
to shoot because Dorsey had “inflicted serious injuries on
both officers” and he “was striking Rodriguez with his fist
while turning her Taser on her.” But the district court’s order
denying summary judgment observed Smith’s argument that
post-incident photographs showed an “unscathed”
Rodriguez and that the officers’ medical records reflected
only minor injuries very different from the type that one
would expect if Dorsey had been pummeling Rodriguez in
the way Agdeppa described. The district court correctly
rejected Agdeppa’s contrary arguments that bruising and
other injuries were not visible in the photos as “unavailing”
because they impermissibly attacked the weight of the
evidence at the summary judgment stage.
    An autopsy report’s description of the bullet trajectories
and the fact that one witness reported Dorsey was holding
Agdeppa’s arm when he was shot also undermine Agdeppa’s
description that Dorsey was standing over Rodriguez as she
laid on the floor, that he was straddling her and punching
her, and that Agdeppa feared the next blow might kill his
partner. The autopsy report indicates that several bullets
traveled through Dorsey’s body from right to left in a
downward direction, and one of the bullets traveled through
Dorsey’s stomach from left to right in an upward direction.
12                         SMITH V. AGDEPPA

Witness F told the police investigators that after he was shot
the second time, Dorsey let go of Agdeppa’s wrist, began to
walk toward Agdeppa, and that Agdeppa then fired two more
times. The dissent decides the Commissioners’ report must
contain a typo, and that it must have intended to refer to
Dorsey holding onto Rodriguez’s wrist. But we are not free
to speculate about whether there are errors in the record. As
the district court correctly determined, if deemed credible by
the fact-finder, this evidence would allow a jury to question
Agdeppa’s credibility because he claimed that he shot
Dorsey from a distance of six-to-eight feet while Dorsey was
standing over Rodriguez. 5
    On this conflicting record, the district court correctly
concluded that “a jury could find that a reasonable officer in
Agdeppa’s position would not have believed that Rodriguez
or anyone else was in imminent danger and, thus, would
have understood that his use of deadly force violated
plaintiff’s Fourth Amendment rights.” It remains to be seen
whether Smith’s claims can be established at trial, but
pervasive disputes of material fact make this case a textbook
example of an instance in which summary judgment was
improper.
                                    II.
   We review de novo the district court’s decision on
summary judgment that an officer was not entitled to
qualified immunity. Gordon v. Virtumundo, Inc., 575 F.3d

5
  The dissent mistakenly argues that the district court “discounted this
argument earlier in its decision.” In fact, the district court observed that
it could not make a finding “as to how Dorsey was positioned relative to
each gunshot.” But the district court recognized that a fact-finder could
rely upon inconsistencies between Agdeppa’s description and the
physical evidence to impeach Agdeppa’s credibility.
                       SMITH V. AGDEPPA                     13

1040, 1047 (9th Cir. 2009). We view the facts in the light
most favorable to the plaintiff. Est. of Lopez ex rel. Lopez v.
Gelhaus, 871 F.3d 998, 1006 (9th Cir. 2017).
    An order denying summary judgment is not usually an
immediately appealable final decision, but “that general rule
does not apply when the summary judgment motion is based
on a claim of qualified immunity” because “pretrial orders
denying qualified immunity generally fall within the
collateral order doctrine.” Plumhoff v. Rickard, 572 U.S.
765, 771–72 (2014). The scope of our review in these
interlocutory appeals is limited to the “purely legal . . .
contention that [an officer’s] conduct ‘did not violate the
[Constitution], and in any event, did not violate clearly
established law.’” Foster v. City of Indio, 908 F.3d 1204,
1210 (9th Cir. 2018) (quoting Plumhoff, 572 U.S. at 773).
Accordingly, those portions of the district court’s order
determining questions of “‘evidence sufficiency,’ i.e., which
facts a party may, or may not, be able to prove at trial . . .
[are] not appealable” until after final judgment. Johnson v.
Jones, 515 U.S. 304, 313 (1995). This rule forecloses
interlocutory review of any “fact-related dispute about the
pretrial record, namely, whether or not the evidence in the
pretrial record was sufficient to show a genuine issue of fact
for trial.” Est. of Anderson v. Marsh, 985 F.3d 726, 731 (9th
Cir. 2021) (quoting Foster, 908 F.3d at 1210).
    When the district court denies qualified immunity and
“does not explicitly set out the facts that it relied upon, we
undertake a review of the pretrial record only to the extent
necessary to determine what facts the district court, in the
light most favorable to the nonmoving party, likely
assumed.” Est. of Lopez, 871 F.3d at 1007–08 (quoting
Watkins v. City of Oakland, 145 F.3d 1087, 1091 (9th Cir.
1998)). We then examine: (1) whether the facts, viewed in
14                     SMITH V. AGDEPPA

the light most favorable to the plaintiff, show that the
officer’s conduct violated a constitutional right; and (2)
whether the right in question was “clearly established” at the
time of the officer’s action. Tolan v. Cotton, 572 U.S. 650,
655–56 (2014). If we answer either question in the negative,
the officer is entitled to qualified immunity.
                             III.
                              A.
    Smith argues that Agdeppa’s use of deadly force was
objectively unreasonable and violated Dorsey’s clearly
established Fourth Amendment rights. Courts assess
whether an officer’s use of force was objectively reasonable
by weighing “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.” Graham, 490 U.S. at
396. The Graham factors are not “considered in a vacuum,”
but must be weighed “in relation to the amount of force used
to effect [the] particular seizure.” Smith v. City of Hemet,
394 F.3d 689, 701 (9th Cir. 2005) (en banc) (quoting Chew
v. Gates, 27 F.3d 1432, 1441 (9th Cir. 1994)). We take the
perspective of the officer on the scene without the benefit of
20/20 hindsight. Graham, 490 U.S. at 396–97. Because
deadly force involves a serious intrusion on Fourth
Amendment rights, deadly force is reasonable only if the
officer has probable cause to believe the suspect poses an
immediate and significant threat of death or serious physical
injury to the officer or others. Gonzalez, 747 F.3d at 793
(quoting Scott v. Henrich, 39 F.3d 912, 914 (9th Cir. 1994));
see Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1, 11 (1985). We have
also repeatedly stated that an officer must give warning
before using deadly force “whenever practicable.”
                       SMITH V. AGDEPPA                     15

Gonzalez, 747 F.3d at 794 (quoting Harris, 126 F.3d at
1201).
    Deadly force cases present additional, heightened
challenges because defendant officers are often the only
surviving eyewitnesses. See, e.g., Gonzalez, 747 F.3d at
794; Scott, 39 F.3d at 915. For this reason, we have
explained that summary judgment should be granted
“sparingly” in deadly force cases and courts must take
special care to “ensure that the officer is not taking
advantage of the fact that the witness most likely to
contradict his story—the person shot dead—is unable to
testify.” Gonzalez, 747 F.3d at 795 (quoting Scott, 39 F.3d
at 915); see Newmaker v. City of Fortuna, 842 F.3d 1108,
1116 (9th Cir. 2016) (explaining that summary judgment is
not appropriate in a deadly force case if the plaintiff’s claim
turns on an officer’s credibility, and credibility is genuinely
in doubt).
    When other evidence in the record, “such as medical
reports, contemporaneous statements by the officer, the
available physical evidence, and any expert testimony
proffered by the plaintiff” is inconsistent with material
evidence offered by the defendant, “[q]ualified immunity
should not be granted.” Newmaker, 842 F.3d at 1116
(alterations, quotation marks, and citation omitted). In such
cases, district courts must allow juries to consider the
evidence that contradicted the officers’ version of events,
and decide whether they were persuaded by the officers’
testimony. See, e.g., Bator v. State of Hawai’i, 39 F.3d 1021,
1026 (9th Cir. 1994) (“At the summary judgment stage, . . .
the district court may not make credibility determinations or
weigh conflicting evidence.”).
16                    SMITH V. AGDEPPA

    Our case law bears out that we have consistently applied
these standards. In Newmaker, we rejected a request for
qualified immunity based on evidence that contradicted the
officers’ account of a fatal shooting. 842 F.3d at 1110.
There, as here, the crux of the case turned on what the jury
would decide about what happened in the moments before
the shooting. The lead-up to the shooting in Newmaker
mirrors this case in pertinent respects: Newmaker was nearly
naked when he was shot, he refused to comply with officer
instructions, and he physically resisted officers after they
tased him in “drive” stun and “dart” mode. Id. at 1111–12.
The officer who shot and killed Newmaker alleged that
Newmaker grabbed another officer’s baton, stood up, and
swung it “violently” and “aggressively” at the officer’s head.
Id. at 1112. The defendant claimed that he warned
Newmaker to drop the baton before shooting him from a
standing position. Id. According to the officer, Newmaker
was also standing, but he shot Newmaker a second time after
he fell to the ground because Newmaker rose and began
swinging the baton again. Id.
    We reversed the district court’s order granting summary
judgment on qualified immunity grounds because the
evidence conflicted with the officer’s testimony. First, the
officer had previously described shooting Newmaker twice
in quick succession, failing to mention that Newmaker fell
and got back up. Id. at 1113, 1116. Second, the autopsy
report indicated that Newmaker was shot while he was
bending over and low to the ground, not while he was
standing. Id. at 1114–16. Third, though a car dashboard
camera captured only bits and pieces of the scuffle and
shooting, there was “nothing clearly visible in [Newmaker’s]
hands” when he was shot, and contrary to the officer’s
statement, it appeared that Newmaker was shot after he fell
                       SMITH V. AGDEPPA                     17

to the ground. Id. at 1115. We concluded that summary
judgment was inappropriate because it was disputed
“whether the officers were telling the truth about when, why,
and how [the officer] shot Newmaker.” Id. at 1117.
    Gonzalez v. City of Anaheim is another fatal shooting
case in which physical evidence conflicted with the officers’
description of events leading up to the shooting. 747 F.3d at
791. The only testimony concerning the minutes leading up
to Gonzalez’s death came from officers who stopped
Gonzalez for a traffic violation. Id. at 792. They described
that Gonzalez refused to exit the van or turn off its engine
and the officers, one standing on each side of the vehicle,
reached through the van’s driver and passenger windows to
open the van’s doors. Id. They later testified that it appeared
Gonzalez had something in his hands and that they struggled
to restrain him as they were leaning through the van’s
windows. Id. The officers recounted that Gonzalez
managed to shift the van into “drive,” and that he “stomped”
on the accelerator. Id. at 792–93. The officer who shot
Gonzalez was still leaning into the van. He stated that he
yelled at Gonzalez to stop and then shot him in the head from
less than six inches away, killing him. Id. at 793.
    Our en banc court reasoned that the key issues were
whether a jury could decide that an objectively reasonable
officer would have perceived an immediate threat of death
or serious bodily injury, and whether a jury could decide it
was practicable for the defendants to have given Gonzalez a
deadly force warning. Id. at 794. We reversed the district
court’s order granting summary judgment because the
officers’ statements could not be reconciled with the record.
By their mutual account, the van accelerated to fifty miles
per hour after Gonzalez stomped on the accelerator and they
both feared for the safety of the officer who had leaned into
18                     SMITH V. AGDEPPA

the van’s passenger’s side and was trapped in the
accelerating van. Id. at 794. But the defendants also
recounted that the van traveled just fifty feet in five to ten
seconds. We reasoned that if that had been the case, a jury
could decide that the van was not traveling at a high speed
and that it was practicable to provide a warning before using
deadly force. Id. at 797 (citing Deorle v. Rutherford, 272
F.3d 1272, 1283–84 (9th Cir. 2001) (“Shooting a person who
is making a disturbance because he walks in the direction of
an officer at a steady gait with a can or bottle in his hand is
clearly not objectively reasonable [where] . . . the officer
neither orders the individual to stop nor drop the can or bottle
. . . .”)).
    The dissent missteps by conflating the practicability of
providing a deadly force warning—which depends on
whether the risk of danger was imminent—with whether
there was a risk of danger. Our en banc court’s decision in
Gonzalez clearly demonstrates these are two different
inquiries. Like the officers in this case, the officers in
Gonzalez described an “escalating” and “violent” struggle to
restrain Gonzalez after a traffic stop, and they recounted that
Gonzalez accelerated the van he was in while one officer was
trapped inside. We concluded that factual discrepancies in
Gonzalez would allow a reasonable jury to find that there
was time to give a deadly force warning, despite the danger
posed by the moving vehicle. Here, depending on what
happened in the locker room, a jury could find that Agdeppa
had an opportunity to give Dorsey such a warning before
escalating to deadly force. Indeed, Agdeppa provided
several warnings before using intermediate force, but at no
point did Agdeppa warn Dorsey that he was escalating to the
use of his firearm.
                          SMITH V. AGDEPPA                            19

    The dissent engages in its own detailed and elaborate
fact-finding and decides that Dorsey presented a significant
risk to officer safety. But all resisting suspects pose some
risk to officer safety and our precedent nevertheless provides
that an officer may use deadly force only if the officer has
probable cause to believe a suspect poses an immediate and
significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the
officer or others. See Gonzalez, 747 F.3d at 793; Newmaker,
842 F.3d at 1116. It also requires that, if the circumstances
permit, an officer must give notice before using deadly force.
See, e.g., Gonzalez, 747 F.3d at 794.
                                   B.
    The district court did not err in denying Agdeppa’s
request for qualified immunity because “the version of
events offered by [Agdeppa was] materially contradicted by
the record.” Newmaker, 842 F.3d at 1116. Agdeppa argues
that he did not violate Dorsey’s clearly established
constitutional rights by using “lethal force during hand-to-
hand combat,” but he attested that he was standing between
six and eight feet away from Dorsey when he shot. Both
Agdeppa and the dissent forget the limited scope of our
interlocutory jurisdiction and ignore the district court’s
factual findings, improperly weigh conflicting evidence,
assess the sufficiency of the evidence, and make credibility
determinations. 6 The district court construed the evidence

6
  For example, the dissent includes a table that selects statements from
the audio recording, but draws numerous inferences in favor of the
officers; e.g. “pained grunt/groan.” Elsewhere, the dissent decides the
security guards’ statements thoroughly corroborate the officers’
description of events, only to later suggest that the guards were unable
to see what was happening prior to the shooting. In fact, the record does
not allow us to determine the guards’ respective vantage points and we
20                        SMITH V. AGDEPPA

in the light most favorable to Smith and concluded that a jury
could reasonably reject Agdeppa’s description of a “deadly
fight” in the locker room and find that “a reasonable officer
in Agdeppa’s position would not have believed that
Rodriguez or anyone else was in imminent danger, and thus,
would have understood his use of deadly force violated
plaintiff’s Fourth Amendment rights.” See Scott, 39 F.3d at
914 (“An officer’s use of deadly force is reasonable only if
‘the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect
poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury
to the officer or others.’” (quoting Garner, 471 U.S. at 3)). 7
    It is uncontested that Dorsey posed some danger to the
officers’ safety by actively resisting arrest, but our case law
required Agdeppa to give a deadly force warning if doing so
was practicable. See, e.g., Gonzalez, 747 F.3d at 794;
Harris, 126 F.3d at 1201, 1204; Est. of Lopez, 871 F.3d at
1011 (holding that an officer’s use of deadly force was
unreasonable because the officer “indisputably had time to
issue a warning, but never notified [the decedent] that he
would be fired upon if he either turned or failed to drop the

are not allowed to make credibility determinations. This is an issue for
the fact-finder on remand.
7
  Agdeppa also argues that the evidence in the record was insufficient to
create a dispute of material fact as to whether Dorsey posed an imminent
threat to the officers and contends that the district court erred in
considering the autopsy and Commission reports because they were
inadmissible. We lack jurisdiction to consider Agdeppa’s challenges to
the sufficiency of the evidence, see Est. of Anderson, 985 F.3d at 731,
and boiled down, Agdeppa’s evidentiary arguments are disguised
challenges to the sufficiency of the evidence. In any event, the district
court was entitled to consider the report at the summary judgment stage
because it could be presented in a form admissible at trial. See Beech
Aircraft Corp. v. Rainey, 488 U.S. 153, 170 (1988); Sullivan v. Dollar
Tree Stores, Inc., 623 F.3d 770, 777 (9th Cir. 2010).
                           SMITH V. AGDEPPA                             21

gun”). And as the district court explained, Smith presented
evidence calling into question whether Agdeppa warned
Dorsey of his intent to use deadly force.
    The application of our well-established rule to
Agdeppa’s conduct is straightforward because Agdeppa
never claimed that it was not practicable to give a deadly
force warning. On the contrary, when asked at his deposition
if he warned Dorsey before using deadly force, Agdeppa
said, “I know I said something. . . . I yelled something.” In
his sworn declaration submitted in support of his summary
judgment motion, and in the statement of undisputed
material facts he filed in the trial court, Agdeppa alleged that,
before shooting, he “gave Dorsey a verbal warning, stating
words to the effect that Dorsey needed to stop.” 8 If we view
the facts in the light most favorable to Smith, we cannot
disregard Agdeppa’s sworn account: whatever happened in
the locker room after the body-cams were knocked off,
Agdeppa’s statement was that he had time to yell “stop.”
Setting aside for the moment that no such warning can be
heard on the audio recording, Agdeppa never claimed that
he warned Dorsey he was going to switch from using his
taser to using his firearm if Dorsey did not stop resisting.
Because the officers had tased Dorsey at least five times, a

8
  Agdeppa’s brief to this court recycles a bald assertion that appeared for
the first time in his summary judgment brief, that he “warned [Dorsey]
that he would shoot.” This assertion lacked any evidentiary support and
conflicted with Agdeppa’s pre-trial statements that he told Dorsey to
“stop.” Because counsel’s argument was not evidence, see, e.g., Gaines
v. Relf, 53 U.S. 472, 490 (1851), the district court properly ignored it.
    Ironically, the unsupported assertion in Agdeppa’s brief that he did
provide a warning supports Smith’s contention that there was time to
provide one.
22                        SMITH V. AGDEPPA

command to “stop” would have done nothing to warn
Dorsey that Agdeppa was preparing to ramp up to use deadly
force. See, e.g., Gonzalez, 747 F.3d at 794 (“In general, we
have recognized that an officer must give a warning before
using deadly force ‘whenever practicable.’” (quoting Harris,
126 F.3d at 1201)); Harris, 126 F.3d at 1204 (“Whenever
practicable, a warning must be given so that the suspect may
end his resistance.” (emphasis added)); see also S.R. Nehad
v. Browder, 929 F.3d 1125, 1138 (9th Cir. 2019) (“Even
assuming Browder did command Nehad to ‘Stop, drop it,’
there is no dispute that Browder never warned Nehad that a
failure to comply would result in the use of force, let alone
deadly force.”). 9     Agdeppa’s declaration is a sworn
statement by a party opponent and there is no conflicting
evidence on this point. Cf. Fed. R. Evid. 801(d)(2).
Particularly in light of the Commissioners’ report, a
reasonable jury could decide that it was practicable for
Agdeppa to give Dorsey a deadly force warning.
    Finally, as the district court recognized, no warning, not
even the “stop” that Agdeppa alleges he yelled, can be heard
on the officers’ body-cam audio clips. On that basis alone,
a reasonable jury could find Agdeppa’s use of deadly force
was unreasonable and violated clearly established law.
    The dissent laments that we do not say more about the
standard for qualified immunity, but our opinion accurately
explains the applicable standard. It is curious that the dissent
compiles a detailed set of factual findings from contested
evidence, and disregards our limited jurisdiction on

9
 Browder was published in 2019, after the events at issue in this case,
but we concluded the officer’s Fourth Amendment violation in that case
violated law that was clearly established as of April 2015. See Browder,
929 F.3d at 1130, 1141.
                       SMITH V. AGDEPPA                       23

interlocutory review: we cannot engage in fact-finding, we
cannot make credibility determinations, and we are obliged
to view disputed facts in Smith’s favor. From the beginning,
the dissent forgets our role. It first accepts that no warning
is audible on the recording, then goes on to assume that
Agdeppa told Dorsey to “stop” in the moments before the
shooting; it decides that Agdeppa had only a “micro-second
interval” to provide a warning and credits Witness F’s
recollection that “moments prior” to the shooting, Dorsey
tried to pull Agdeppa’s gun from his holster—even though,
according to the Commissioners’ report, the gym’s security
video showed that Witness F had exited the locker room
prior to the shooting. Despite its suggestions to the contrary,
body-cam video does not justify appellate fact-finding in this
case, because there is no video footage of the moments
before the shooting—there are only grunting and banging
sounds.
    If a fact-finder ultimately rules in Agdeppa’s favor
regarding the way the events unfolded in the locker room,
Agdeppa will likely prevail. But at this stage, we are not free
to overlook the Commissioners’ contrary finding that once a
struggle ensued, there was “no exigency that required the
officers to stay physically engaged with [Dorsey].” Nor are
we free to ignore the factual disputes identified by the district
court. See, e.g., Est. of Anderson, 985 F.3d at 731 (“A public
official may not immediately appeal ‘a fact-related dispute
about the pretrial record, namely, whether or not the
evidence in the pretrial record was sufficient to show a
genuine issue of fact for trial.’” (alteration omitted) (quoting
Foster, 908 F.3d at 1210)). As even the dissent concedes, a
factor that can be considered in the excessive force analysis
is whether proper warnings were given.
24                     SMITH V. AGDEPPA

                             IV.
    It is not our place to step into the jury’s shoes and we do
not know what happened in the crucial interval before
Agdeppa shot Dorsey. Left to assess the evidence and
witness credibility, a reasonable fact-finder could decide that
Agdeppa’s characterization of the events in the locker room
was contradicted by other evidence in the record. A
reasonable jury could also conclude that Agdeppa had an
opportunity to warn Dorsey and did not do so. Both were
valid grounds for the district court to properly deny qualified
immunity.
     AFFIRMED.

BRESS, Circuit Judge, dissenting:
    The two police officers in this case found themselves in
a violent confrontation with a large, combative suspect, who
ignored their repeated orders to stop resisting and failed to
respond to numerous taser deployments. After the suspect’s
assault on the officers intensified and he wrested one of the
officers’ tasers into his own hands, one officer shot the
suspect to end the aggression. Two independent witnesses
verified the officers’ account. Was it clearly established for
purposes of overcoming qualified immunity that officers
enduring a frenzied onslaught were legally required to call a
“time out” and issue another warning before they used
deadly force? Remarkably, the majority says yes. That is
clearly wrong.
   The Supreme Court has “repeatedly told courts—and the
Ninth Circuit in particular—not to define clearly established
law at a high level of generality.” Kisela v. Hughes, 138 S.
                       SMITH V. AGDEPPA                     25

Ct. 1148, 1152 (2018) (per curiam) (quoting City and County
of San Francisco v. Sheehan, 575 U.S. 600, 613 (2015)).
Our court today repeats that same error, in this case finding
it clearly established that officers in the heat of battle must
follow a judge-devised warning script when officer safety is
most jeopardized. The split-second decision officers made
here presents a classic case for qualified immunity. The
majority’s decision otherwise is contrary to law and requires
officers to hesitate in situations in which decisive action,
even if leading to the regrettable loss of human life, can be
necessary to protect their own.
    After repeated verbal commands and efforts to use non-
lethal force failed, no clearly established law required these
officers to recite magic words of further warning in the
highly dangerous situation they confronted. Respectfully, I
dissent.
                               I
    In its effort to turn tangential “disputed” facts into
supposedly critical ones, the majority fails to provide a full
account of the perilous circumstances that produced the
events in this case, while glossing over the officers’ repeated
attempts to avoid resort to deadly force. Though the
majority strains to detect inconsistencies in the officers’
accounts, the key aspects of this case are undisputed, based
largely on video and audio recordings. To be clear, the
majority’s claimed factual disputes are ultimately beside the
point because even accepting them as valid, the majority
opinion still commits a fundamental error of law in treating
as clearly established a warning rule that operates at too high
a level of generality, and that we have never said applies in
the throes of a violent altercation. Nevertheless, and
although we construe the facts in the light most favorable to
26                    SMITH V. AGDEPPA

the plaintiff, a more complete retelling of the events is
warranted.
                              A
    Around 9:00 a.m. on the morning of October 29, 2018,
Officers Edward Agdeppa and Perla Rodriguez were called
to a 24-Hour Fitness gym on Sunset Boulevard in
Hollywood to investigate an apparent trespasser who was
causing a disturbance. Both officers activated their body
cameras before entering the gym. Once inside, an employee
immediately approached the officers and reported, “We have
a gentleman who’s a little bit irate, and he’s not listening,
and he’s already threatened a few members, and he’s
assaulted security as well.” The employee led the officers to
the men’s locker room where the suspect, later identified as
Albert Dorsey, was located.
    Once inside, the officers encountered Dorsey, who was
standing naked near a shower area and playing music from
his phone aloud.       Dorsey was a very large man,
approximately 6’1” tall and weighing 280 pounds. Agdeppa
and Rodriguez each weighed approximately 145 pounds and
were 5’1” and 5’5”, respectively. The officers repeatedly
ordered Dorsey to turn off his music, put on his clothes, and
leave the gym. Dorsey did not comply.
    After two minutes had passed, Dorsey walked across the
room, away from his clothes, to look at himself in the mirror.
Both officers again instructed Dorsey to get dressed, but
Dorsey continued to refuse, seemingly taunting the officers.
As the officers waited, Dorsey began dancing to the music
while raising his middle finger in Agdeppa’s direction. At
various points in the videos, two private security guards are
seen in the locker room with the officers.
                      SMITH V. AGDEPPA                     27

    After more than four minutes had passed since the
officers first told Dorsey he needed to leave, Agdeppa
approached Dorsey to handcuff him from behind. Dorsey
resisted Agdeppa’s attempts to control his arms, at which
point Rodriguez stepped in to help. Agdeppa eventually
managed to place a handcuff on Dorsey’s right wrist while
Rodriguez attempted to control Dorsey’s left wrist and
elbow. Dorsey continued to struggle, so the officers tried
various tactical maneuvers to secure Dorsey’s hands. This
included attempting to secure Dorsey against the wall,
switching sides, and using arm, finger, and wrist locks.
Despite these efforts, the officers could not get Dorsey under
control.
     During the struggle, Agdeppa and Rodriguez attempted
to use Rodriguez’s handcuffs to form a “daisy chain,” which
involves connecting two or more sets of handcuffs together
to restrain suspects who are too combative or large to be
restrained by a single set of cuffs. As the officers attempted
to attach the handcuffs together, Dorsey forcefully pulled his
left arm away from Rodriguez and managed to break free of
her grip. The officers directed Dorsey to calm down and stop
resisting, but he continued to defy them. The officers then
maneuvered Dorsey against a wall while using their body
weight to force his hands behind his back.
    After initially pinning Dorsey to the wall, Agdeppa was
able to broadcast a request for additional units. As Dorsey
became more combative, Agdeppa radioed in a request for
backup units, which is a more urgent call for assistance.
Approximately one minute after going “hands on” with
Dorsey, Rodriguez’s body camera was knocked to the
ground in the struggle. Agdeppa’s camera was knocked to
the ground shortly thereafter, and the cameras captured
minimal video of the rest of the events in question. But they
28                    SMITH V. AGDEPPA

continued to record audio, which included frequent bangs,
crashes, shouts of pain, and other indicia of a violent
confrontation.
    It is undisputed that a violent struggle ensued in the
locker room. Despite their further efforts, the officers were
unable to get control of Dorsey, who became increasingly
aggressive. At multiple points during the audio recordings,
the officers are heard yelling at Dorsey to stop resisting.
Dorsey eventually managed to break free of the officers’
grips, and, in response, Agdeppa unholstered his taser and
held it to Dorsey’s chest. Agdeppa maintains that he warned
Dorsey he would use the taser if Dorsey continued to resist.
When Dorsey refused to stop his violent struggling,
Agdeppa cycled the taser twice into Dorsey’s body. After
this failed to subdue Dorsey, Rodriguez fired her taser dart
into Dorsey’s back and activated it for approximately five
seconds. After the first attempt failed, Rodriguez activated
her taser twice more without success.
    The audio recordings confirm that the struggle escalated
after the taser deployments. Rodriguez can be heard
repeatedly demanding that Dorsey “turn around” after the
tasers were cycled. The officers are then heard groaning and
crying out in pain as the sounds of banging and thrashing
increase in volume and intensity. Just before Agdeppa fired
the fatal shots, we hear the most intense shouts of pain from
the officers amidst loud crashing noises.
    The officers’ accounts of this part of the story are fully
consistent with each other. Agdeppa indicated that Dorsey
did not attempt to flee but instead “advance[d] upon” the
officers, “punching at [their] heads and faces while the
handcuff attached to his wrist also swung around and struck”
them. During the struggle, Dorsey landed blows on
                       SMITH V. AGDEPPA                     29

Agdeppa’s head and face area. Agdeppa recalled that one
blow was extremely forceful and knocked him backwards
into a wall, momentarily disorienting him and causing him
to drop his taser to the locker room floor. After Rodriguez
fired her taser for the third time, Dorsey pivoted and struck
her, knocking her to the ground. The officers claim that
Dorsey then straddled Rodriguez, striking her repeatedly and
gaining control of her taser.
    Agdeppa, still dazed from Dorsey’s blow, reoriented
himself and looked up to see Dorsey straddling Rodriguez.
Agdeppa remembered Dorsey “pummeling . . . Rodriguez
with a flurry of punches” as she laid in the fetal position,
trying to protect her face and head. Rodriguez believed that
her life was at risk, and Agdeppa, too, feared that Dorsey
would kill Rodriguez. It was at this point that Agdeppa fired
the fatal shots. After he was shot, Dorsey was still holding
one of the officers’ tasers in his hand. Agdeppa claimed he
warned Dorsey before shooting him, but this part of the
audio recording is chaotic. One can hear a man’s voice
shouting something just before the shots were fired, though
what is said is unclear. I will assume, as the majority does,
that no final warning was given.
    But for all its focus on the warning that was allegedly not
provided, the majority opinion fails to acknowledge the
numerous commands—in word and deed—that the officers
gave in trying to halt Dorsey’s aggression. Before they went
“hands on” with Dorsey, both officers repeatedly urged him
to put on his clothes and leave the gym. Once they went
“hands on,” the recordings confirm that the officers gave
repeated verbal directives and used various means of non-
lethal force to get Dorsey to stop his assault. See Scott v.
Harris, 550 U.S. 372, 381 (2007) (courts at summary
judgment “should . . . view[] the facts in the light depicted
30                         SMITH V. AGDEPPA

by the videotape”).
    Reciting only what I can clearly discern after officers
went “hands on,” this is what the recordings show about
what officers said to Dorsey during the four minutes of
violent struggle:
    Officer       Command or Sound                       Timestamp
    Agdeppa       “Give me your hand.”* 1                16:09:32 2
    Rodriguez     “Put your hands behind your 16:09:33
                  back.”
    Rodriguez     “Stop tensing up!”                     16:09:35
    Rodriguez     “Stop tensing up!”                     16:09:36
    Rodriguez     “Do not tense up on me!”               16:09:37
    Rodriguez     “Do not fucking tense up on            16:09:38
                  me!”
    Agdeppa       “I swear to God, if you                16:09:39
                  fucking tense up, buddy!”
    Rodriguez     “Do not tense up on me.”               16:09:40

1
  The commands that I denote with an asterisk can be heard more clearly
in Agdeppa’s body camera recording than in Rodriguez’s. Gaps in time
without directives or especially loud sounds are filled with other sounds
of struggle, officer-to-officer coordinating communications, and
Dorsey’s initial verbal protests, which I do not include. I also do not
include a small number of statements from the officers that are difficult
to make out over the crashes of the altercation and the music still playing
from Dorsey’s phone. Contrary to the majority’s assertion, I draw no
inferences in favor of the officers, but have simply set forth what is
apparent from the recordings.
2
 Timestamps are displayed in both officers’ body camera recordings.
The two recordings’ timestamps are consistent with one another.
                   SMITH V. AGDEPPA                  31

Officer     Command or Sound              Timestamp
Agdeppa     “What are you gonna do?”      16:09:47
Rodriguez   “Do not fucking tense up on   16:09:49
            me.”
            [Officers continue to        16:09:51–
            struggle with Dorsey as they 16:10:03
            try to place handcuffs on
            him]
Agdeppa     “Calm down.”                  16:10:04
Agdeppa     “Calm down.”                  16:10:05
Rodriguez   “Give me your fucking hand 16:10:10
            then!”
            [Officers continue to         16:10:12–21
            struggle with Dorsey in
            attempting to handcuff him
            with two sets of cuffs in a
            “daisy chain”]
Rodriguez   [Pained                       16:10:20
            Exclamation/Grunt]*
            [Rodriguez’s body camera      16:10:20
            is knocked to the ground as
            Dorsey escalates his
            resistance]
Agdeppa     “Hold on!”                    16:20:21
            [Agdeppa’s body camera is     16:10:22
            knocked to the ground]
Agdeppa     “Stop resisting!”             16:10:23
32                    SMITH V. AGDEPPA

 Officer     Command or Sound                Timestamp
             [Loud Bang]                     16:10:35
             [Bang]                          16:10:41
             [Dorsey is briefly visible on   16:10:45–51
             Rodriguez’s camera
             wrestling and pushing the
             officers]
             [Thud]                          16:11:03
 Agdeppa     “Stop.”                         16:11:10
 Rodriguez   “Give me your fucking           16:11:17
             hand!”
 Agdeppa     “Give her your hand.”           16:11:18
 Rodriguez   “Give me your fucking           16:11:22
             hand.”
 Rodriguez   “Stop fucking resisting!”       16:11:24
 Agdeppa     “Will you relax!”               16:11:31
 Agdeppa     “Get off her.”*                 16:11:33
             [Loud Bang]                     16:11:34
             [Thud]                          16:11:44
 Agdeppa     “Just relax!”                   16:11:54
 Agdeppa     “You’re alright.”*              16:11:55
 Rodriguez   “Stop!”                         16:11:55
 Rodriguez   “Stop!”                         16:11:57
 Agdeppa     “Relax!”                        16:12:10
                   SMITH V. AGDEPPA                     33

Officer     Command or Sound                Timestamp
Rodriguez   “Stop!”                         16:12:12
Agdeppa     “Relax.”                        16:12:20
            [Inaudible Raised Voices]       16:12:20–25
Rodriguez   “Stop trying to [Inaudible]!”   16:12:27
            [Audible Taser                  16:12:28
            Deployment]
Rodriguez   “Turn around or I’m going       16:12:34
            to tase you again!”*
Rodriguez   “Turn around!”                  16:12:36
Rodriguez   “Turn around!”                  16:12:39
Rodriguez   “Turn around!”                  16:12:40
Rodriguez   “Turn around!”                  16:12:42
Rodriguez   “Just give me your hand!”*      16:12:45
            [Repeated and Ongoing           16:12:45–
            Taser Deployments and           16:13:11
            Crashing Sounds]
Rodriguez   [Pained Groan/Grunt]            16:12:55
Rodriguez   [Pained Shout]                  16:12:56
Rodriguez   [Pained Shout and Bang]         16:12:58
            [Bang and Buzz from Taser] 16:12:59
Rodriguez   [Pained Grunt/Groan]            16:13:01
Rodriguez   [Pained Grunt/Groan]            16:13:02
Agdeppa     [Loud Cry of Pain]              16:13:04
34                    SMITH V. AGDEPPA

 Officer       Command or Sound               Timestamp
 Rodriguez     [Pained Grunt/Groan]           16:13:05
               [Inaudible Shout (Man’s        16:13:11
               Voice)]
               [Gunshots]                     16:13:12
 Agdeppa       “Are you okay?”                16:13:15
 Rodriguez     “I’m good!”                    16:13:16
 Agdeppa       “6A15, shots fired! Officer    16:13:17
               needs help! [Inaudible]”

    Agdeppa and Rodriguez were treated at the emergency
room following the incident. Agdeppa was given sutures on
the bridge of his nose and later reported being diagnosed
with a concussion, which left him unable to work for six
months and had further longer-lasting effects. Rodriguez
recalled having a swollen left check and right jaw, abrasions
on her ear and hands, and a pulled muscle behind her knee.
    The Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners
(BOPC) reviewed the incident and issued written findings.
The findings were based on various accounts, including from
the two private security guards who are seen at different
points in the bodycam videos. As the district court noted,
“the course of events presented in the Findings largely
conform to Agdeppa’s account,” with other witnesses who
were in the locker room substantiating key moments in the
encounter. Although the BOPC faulted the officers for not
using greater de-escalation techniques earlier in the
encounter, it concluded that “available evidence supports
that [Agdeppa’s] belief that there was an imminent threat of
death or serious bodily injury at the time of the [shooting]
                          SMITH V. AGDEPPA                           35

was objectively reasonable.”
                                  B
    The majority claims there are “significant discrepancies”
in the events recounted above. That is simply inaccurate.
Based on the reports of the two officers and others, the
BOPC report describes the events as I have. Relying on the
BOPC report, the majority contends that “[b]ystander-
witness statements . . . contradicted Agdeppa’s story.” The
opposite is true. The majority relies on only one alleged
contradiction: one witness recalling Agdeppa potentially
being closer to Dorsey at the time of the shooting than
Agdeppa described. But in fact, the witnesses’ accounts in
the BOPC findings thoroughly corroborate the officers’
descriptions of a violent, escalating struggle in which they
faced a grave risk of serious injury, or worse.
    For example, as set forth in the BOPC report, Witness F,
a security guard, recalled that after Dorsey was tased, Dorsey
punched Agdeppa “more than eight times” in the “face and
head area with his fist that was handcuffed,” with “the force
of the punches knock[ing] [Agdeppa] into the lockers and
walls.” 3 Witness F recalled that “[t]his caused [Agdeppa] to
bounce back toward [Dorsey], who then struck [Agdeppa] in
the face again.” Witness F further described that Dorsey was
“striking [Rodriguez] in the face with his half-open hand”
and “straddling” her, and that “[Rodriguez] was bleeding
from []her mouth as [Dorsey] was hitting []her.” The BOPC
report states that after Rodriguez was “knocked to the
ground by [Dorsey] and was attempting to defend [herself],”
Dorsey “grabbed the TASER with his left hand and began to

3
 Although the BOPC report refers to Officers “A” and “B,” it is apparent
that “A” is Agdeppa and “B” is Rodriguez.
36                         SMITH V. AGDEPPA

push the TASER into [Rodriguez]’s face, simultaneously
hitting [Rodriguez] with his right fist, which had the
handcuffs attached.”
    Even the alleged inconsistency the majority relies upon
supports Agdeppa because it describes a more desperate
situation than even Agdeppa recalled: in Witness F’s
recollection, “moments prior” to the shooting, and “while
[Dorsey] was straddling [Rodriguez], [Dorsey] grabbed
[Agdeppa]’s gun and attempted to pull it out of its holster.”
There is also another problem: the majority opinion is
purporting to identify a supposedly critical factual dispute
based on what Witness F observed at the exact moment of
the shooting, but a careful reading of the BOPC report shows
that based on video surveillance, Witness F was no longer
even in the locker room at that exact moment, having exited
just immediately before. (There is no suggestion in the
BOPC report that Witness F did not see the violent struggle
in the moments leading up to the shooting—an account the
BOPC report fully credits.) And for avoidance of doubt, it
accomplishes nothing for the majority to poke holes in
Witness F’s account when it is the majority opinion that is
relying on the BOPC report to create a supposed disputed of
fact; I am merely showing why that reliance is wholly
misplaced. 4

4
  It is worth noting that, in claiming the BOPC report contradicts
Agdeppa’s account of where he was standing when he fired the fatal
shots, the majority relies exclusively on the district court’s decision. But
the district court, which acknowledged that “plaintiff does not raise this
argument,” focused on a line in the BOPC report which stated that,
“According to Witness F,” after the second shot, “[Dorsey] let go of
Officer A’s wrist.” In the very next sentence, however, the BOPC report
states that “Witness F believed that [Dorsey] looked at Officer A and then
began to walk toward him/her, and that Officer A fired two more
                           SMITH V. AGDEPPA                            37

    To this point, the BOPC report specifically found—
relying on independent witnesses—that Agdeppa reasonably
perceived a risk of death or serious injury to the officers:
         [Agdeppa] used deadly force at a time when,
         as supported by the accounts of two
         independent witnesses, he[] and [Rodriguez]
         were being assaulted by [Dorsey]. At that
         time, the violence of [Dorsey’s] assault
         relative to the officers’ capacities to defend
         themselves was such that it was objectively
         reasonable to believe that there was an
         imminent threat to the officers of death or

rounds.” (emphasis added). This sequence of events would not be
possible if Dorsey were holding Officer A’s (Agdeppa’s) wrist. The line
on which the district court (and the majority) thus rely—referencing
Dorsey holding an officer’s wrist—should likely be a reference to
Officer B (Rodriguez). And to the extent this portion of the BOPC report
should be read as meaning that Officer A (Agdeppa) had time to move
away from Dorsey after Dorsey let go of his wrist, that would allow
Agdeppa to be placed several feet from Dorsey when he shot him. Thus,
either way the majority is wrong (and thus, contrary to the majority, I do
not “decide” that the BOPC report contained a mistake).
   Even more critically, however, as I have noted above, the majority
purports to base its key identified factual dispute on Witness F’s
recollection of Agdeppa’s positioning at the exact moment of the
shooting, when the BOPC later notes that Witness F was not even present
in the locker room at that exact point in time. That may explain why the
BOPC report had no difficulty crediting Agdeppa as having fired “from
an approximate distance of 5–7 feet.” In fact, the BOPC explained that
the investigation into the shooting “revealed that [Agdeppa] fired five
rounds at [Dorsey], from an approximate distance of five to seven feet.”
The supposedly grand inconsistency in the BOPC report on which the
majority hangs its hat (which was based on the district court’s own
independent theorizing) is an inconsistency that the BOPC tellingly did
not even acknowledge.
38                      SMITH V. AGDEPPA

        serious bodily injury.
For our purposes, the BOPC report unequivocally supports
the officers. Confusing issues, the majority relies on
portions of the BOPC report that criticize the officers for
having gotten themselves into this situation and for failing to
use de-escalation tactics earlier in the encounter. But those
findings are irrelevant for purposes of this case. The issue
here is not whether the officers could have de-escalated the
situation before it grew violent, but whether, at the moment
Agdeppa shot Dorsey, the officers faced an imminent threat
of death or serious injury. On this critical point, the BOPC
concludes that they did, based on the same undisputed facts
I have set forth.
     Equally wrong is the majority’s assertion that “physical
evidence . . . conflicts with Agdeppa’s story.”               The
“evidence” the majority refers to here is the officers’
injuries, which the majority (like the district court) believes
are too insubstantial. But as I recounted above, the officers
did suffer injuries, including Agdeppa sustaining a
prominent facial laceration. The officers never claimed to
have suffered the level of injury the majority apparently
expects they should have sustained. And nothing about the
officers’ account required injuries more severe. Although it
is true, as the district court noted, that neither officer appears
to have suffered broken bones or more serious injuries, that
fortuity cannot alter the analysis. The majority suggests that
the district court described Rodriguez as “unscathed”
following the incident, but the portion of the district court
decision the majority cites merely recites this as an argument
made by the plaintiff.
    The majority is also clearly wrong in asserting that the
autopsy report “undermines Agdeppa’s description” of the
                       SMITH V. AGDEPPA                      39

events. The district court noted that “from their entry point,
three of the four bullets travelled downward relative to
Dorsey’s body, but one travelled upward.” Based on this,
the plaintiff argued that the bullet trajectory raised questions
as to whether Dorsey was standing or hunched over
Rodriguez at the time he was shot. This argument—which
the district court noted the plaintiff had raised “for the first
time” at the summary judgment hearing—is based not on
expert analysis, but on the impromptu speculation of
counsel.
     Nevertheless, the majority claims that “the district court
correctly determined this evidence could allow a jury to
question Agdeppa’s credibility” as inconsistent with
Agdeppa’s claims about Dorsey’s positioning at the time of
the shooting. That is, again, flatly inaccurate. The district
court listed the plaintiff’s bullet-trajectory argument as a
potential factual dispute that the plaintiff had identified. But
the district court in fact discounted this argument earlier in
its decision, recognizing that “[b]ecause there is no evidence
regarding the sequence of the gunshots, the court cannot
draw any inference as to how Dorsey was positioned relative
to each gunshot.”
    In short, although the majority tries to gin up factual
disputes, none are material, or even real. This confirms the
total irrelevancy of the majority’s multi-page discussion of
Newmaker v. City of Fortuna, 842 F.3d 1108 (9th Cir. 2016),
and Gonzalez v. City of Anaheim, 747 F.3d 789 (9th Cir.
2014) (en banc), two cases that have nothing to do with this
one beyond the fact they concerned officer-involved
shootings. In Newmaker, two officers provided conflicting
testimony about the circumstances of the shooting and
arrived at their version of events “[o]nly after receiving
suggestions from [an investigator].” 842 F.3d at 1111–13.
40                     SMITH V. AGDEPPA

Even more significantly, the officers asserted that the
suspect was standing and swinging a police baton at them,
but the autopsy report and video evidence indicated that the
man was shot in the back while lying on the ground. See id.
at 1111–16. In Gonzalez, an officer shot a man in the head
at point blank range with no warning and no prior resort to
nonlethal force, and the officer’s account, which turned on
the speed of a moving vehicle, included as to that critical
issue a “combination of facts [that] appear[ed] to be
physically impossible.” 747 F.3d at 794.
     These cases involved genuine disputes of highly material
facts. They provide no license for elevating phantom factual
disputes into critical ones, as the majority does here. The
implicit suggestion in the majority opinion that these (non-
existent) factual disputes provide the linchpin for
disbelieving the obvious import of the video and audio
recordings, the officers’ sworn statements, and the
confirmatory bystander recollections, is entirely unfounded.
It is therefore completely false for the majority to assert that
“the version of events offered by Agdeppa was materially
contradicted by the record.”
    But even granting the majority its claimed factual
discrepancies, the key facts here are undisputed: officers
were engaged in a violent struggle in an enclosed area with
a much larger man who fought with the officers and
repeatedly resisted arrest, who refused to stop his aggression
despite repeated warnings and tasings, and who had taken
control of one officer’s taser. Just before the fatal shots were
fired, the officers can be heard crying out in pain as crashing
and thrashing noises intensify. Two independent witnesses
corroborated the severity of Dorsey’s attack.
     The majority’s repeated accusation that I have engaged
                       SMITH V. AGDEPPA                      41

in fact-finding is baseless. It is the majority that is ignoring
the critical and undisputed facts. The question, then, is
whether it was clearly established that the officers in this
extreme situation were required to give a further warning
before using deadly force.
                               II
    The majority opinion says almost nothing about the
rigorous legal standards governing the qualified immunity
analysis, but they are central to the proper resolution of this
case. Qualified immunity protects government officials
from § 1983 suits unless “(1) they violated a federal statutory
or constitutional right, and (2) the unlawfulness of their
conduct was ‘clearly established at the time.’” District of
Columbia v. Wesby, 138 S. Ct. 577, 589 (2018) (quoting
Reichle v. Howards, 566 U.S. 658, 664 (2012)). We need
not answer the first question if the law is not clearly
established. Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 236 (2009).
    For a right to be clearly established, it must be
“sufficiently clear that every reasonable official would have
understood that what he is doing violates that right.”
Mullenix v. Luna, 577 U.S. 7, 11 (2015) (per curiam)
(quoting Reichle, 566 U.S. at 664). This is a high standard:
“existing precedent must have placed the statutory or
constitutional question beyond debate.” Id. at 12 (quoting
Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 563 U.S. 731, 741 (2011)). The “rule
must be settled law, which means it is dictated by controlling
authority or a robust consensus of cases of persuasive
authority.” Wesby, 138 S. Ct. at 589–90 (quotations
omitted). This “demanding” requirement “protects all but
the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the
law,” and calls for “a high degree of specificity.” Id. at 589–
42                     SMITH V. AGDEPPA

91 (quotations omitted); see also Rivas-Villegas v.
Cortesluna, 142 S. Ct. 4, 7–8 (2021) (per curiam).
    It is critical that clearly established law be sufficiently
specific. The Supreme Court has “repeatedly stressed that
courts must not ‘define clearly established law at a high level
of generality, since doing so avoids the crucial question
whether the official acted reasonably in the particular
circumstances that he or she faced.’” Wesby, 138 S. Ct. at
590 (quoting Plumhoff v. Rickard, 572 U.S. 765, 779
(2014)). This “specificity is especially important in the
Fourth Amendment context, where . . . ‘[i]t is sometimes
difficult for an officer to determine how the relevant legal
doctrine, here excessive force, will apply to the factual
situation the officer confronts.’” Mullenix, 577 U.S. at 12
(quoting Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 205 (2001)
(alteration in original)).
    Because no one suggests this is the rare “obvious case”
in which general principles suffice to clearly establish the
unlawfulness of Agdeppa’s conduct, Wesby, 138 S. Ct. at
590 (quoting Brosseau v. Haugen, 543 U.S. 194, 199 (2004)
(per curiam)), Agdeppa is entitled to qualified immunity
unless “existing precedent ‘squarely governs’ the specific
facts at issue.” Kisela v. Hughes, 138 S. Ct. 1148, 1153
(2018) (per curiam) (emphasis added) (quoting Mullenix,
577 U.S. at 13); see also, e.g., Brosseau, 543 U.S. at 201;
Ventura v. Rutledge, 978 F.3d 1088, 1091 (9th Cir. 2020).
The critical question is thus “whether the violative nature of
particular conduct is clearly established.” Mullenix, 136 S.
Ct. at 308 (quoting al-Kidd, 563 U.S. at 742).
    The plaintiff’s theory is that Agdeppa used excessive
force when he shot Dorsey. To assess the reasonableness of
a particular use of force, we apply the standards from
                        SMITH V. AGDEPPA                       43

Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386 (1989), and “balance ‘the
nature and quality of the intrusion on the individual’s Fourth
Amendment interests’ against ‘the countervailing
government interests at stake.’” Miller v. Clark Cnty., 340
F.3d 959, 964 (9th Cir. 2003) (quoting Graham, 490 U.S. at
396). In doing so, “[w]e consider ‘the type and amount of
force inflicted’” in tandem with “‘(1) the severity of the
crime at issue, (2) whether the suspect posed an immediate
threat to the safety of the officers or others, and (3) whether
the suspect was actively resisting arrest or attempting to
evade arrest by flight.’” O’Doan v. Sanford, 991 F.3d 1027,
1037 (9th Cir. 2021) (quoting Miller, 340 F.3d at 964).
Another factor that can be considered is whether proper
warnings were or could have been given. See Isayeva v.
Sacramento Sheriff’s Department, 872 F.3d 938, 947 (9th
Cir. 2017). In conducting this analysis, we do not “second-
guess officers’ real-time decisions from the standpoint of
perfect hindsight,” O’Doan, 991 F.3d at 1036, and we must
recognize that “officers are often forced to make split-second
judgments—in circumstances that are tense, uncertain, and
rapidly evolving—about the amount of force that is
necessary in a particular situation,” Graham, 490 U.S. at
397.
    Interestingly, the majority opinion does not appear to
take issue with Agdeppa’s use of force standing alone, much
less suggest that Agdeppa violated clearly established law in
that regard (this was the basis for the district court’s decision
denying qualified immunity, which was clearly wrong).
Instead, the majority tells us, what makes Agdeppa’s use of
force violative of clearly established law is that Agdeppa
failed to give a special warning before he shot. Although the
plaintiff here barely raised this issue in the district court, the
majority holds that Ninth Circuit precedent creates a “well-
44                     SMITH V. AGDEPPA

established rule” that “required Agdeppa to warn before
using deadly force if doing so was practicable,” and that
construing the facts in favor of the plaintiff, Agdeppa’s
failure to give a pre-shot warning “violated clearly
established law.”
    The majority thereby contravenes the Supreme Court’s
clear directives on qualified immunity. The Supreme Court
has “repeatedly stressed that courts must not define clearly
established law at a high level of generality,” explaining that
“[a] rule is too general if the unlawfulness of the officer’s
conduct does not follow immediately from the conclusion
that the rule was firmly established.” Wesby, 138 S. Ct. at
590 (emphasis added) (quotation & alteration omitted). The
Supreme Court has told us this again and again, sometimes
even calling our court out by name due to our repeated
infractions in this area. See Kisela, 138 S. Ct. at 1152;
Sheehan, 575 U.S. at 613; Lopez v. Smith, 574 U.S. 1, 6
(2014) (per curiam); al-Kidd, 563 U.S. at 742.
    The majority opinion repeats our mistakes of the past.
The majority is correct that under Ninth Circuit precedent,
“[i]n general, we have recognized that an officer must give a
warning before using deadly force ‘whenever practicable.’”
Gonzalez, 747 F.3d at 794 (quoting Harris v. Roderick, 126
F.3d 1189, 1201 (9th Cir. 1997)). But this standard is
obviously far, far too general to create clearly established
law for purposes of overcoming qualified immunity. We
need look no further than our articulation of this “warning
rule,” which on its face recognizes it is not a one-size-fits-all
proposition. We have stated only that the rule applies “[i]n
general,” “‘whenever practicable.’” Gonzalez, 747 F.3d at
794 (emphasis added) (quoting Harris, 126 F.3d at 1201).
We have also specifically emphasized that “[t]he absence of
a warning does not necessarily mean that [an officer’s] use
                        SMITH V. AGDEPPA                       45

of deadly force was unreasonable.” Id. at 797 (emphasis
added).
    Standing alone, and outside of an obvious case (this is
not one), the warning principle is pitched at a level of
generality that is much too high to create clearly established
law in “the particular circumstances” that Agdeppa faced.
Wesby, 138 S. Ct. at 590. Our “warning principle” cases
certainly do not clearly establish the types of situations in
which a warning is “practicable,” what form the warning
must take, or how specific it must be. Nor does existing law
clearly establish how the lack of a warning is to be balanced
against the other Graham factors in the context of a case such
as this, and, in particular, the type of imminent threat to
safety that the officers faced.
    The origins of the warning principle only further confirm
that it operates at a level of generality that is too elevated for
qualified immunity purposes. In Harris, we sourced our
warning rule to the Supreme Court’s decision in
Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1, 11 (1985), which held that
“[w]here the suspect poses no immediate threat to the officer
and no threat to others, the harm resulting from failing to
apprehend him does not justify the use of deadly force to do
so.” See Harris, 126 F.3d at 1201 (citing Garner, 471 U.S.
at 11–12). But the Supreme Court has been clear that “[t]he
standards from Garner . . . ‘are cast at a high level of
generality,’ so they ordinarily do not clearly establish
rights.” Isayeva, 872 F.3d at 951 (quoting Brosseau, 543
U.S. at 199); see also Rivas-Villegas, 142 S. Ct. at 8 (same).
When Garner is too general to create clearly established law
in a particular case, a general warning principle inferred
from Garner is likewise incapable of serving that function.
46                     SMITH V. AGDEPPA

     The majority was thus required to come forward with
“existing precedent” that “squarely governs the specific facts
at issue.” Kisela, 138 S. Ct. at 1153 (quotation omitted). But
no precedent possibly fits that bill because the cases the
majority identifies all involved officers who shot suspects
almost immediately after encountering them, where the
suspects presented no obvious threat to officer safety. In
Harris, a police sniper in a hilltop position opened fire on
suspects who were exhibiting no immediate signs of
aggression, without even announcing that police were
present. 126 F.3d at 1193–94, 1202–04. In Gonzalez, the
officer shot a man in the head at point blank range with no
warning and no prior resort to nonlethal deterrents,
immediately after the suspect drove away with the officer in
the car at a speed that may have been no faster than three to
seven miles per hour. See 747 F.3d at 794–97. In Estate of
Lopez ex rel. Lopez v. Gelhaus, 871 F.3d 998 (9th Cir. 2017),
the officer shot a thirteen-year-old boy—who was holding a
fake gun and displaying no signs of aggression—moments
after arriving on the scene, “without knowing if [the boy’s]
finger was on the trigger, without having identified himself
as a police officer, and without ever having warned [the boy]
that deadly force would be used.” Id. at 1010–11. And in
S.R. Nehad v. Browder, 929 F.3d 1125 (9th Cir. 2019),
which was decided after the events of this case, the suspect
was making no sudden movements when an officer fatally
shot him from seventeen feet away, less than five seconds
after the officer stepped out of his car, after making no
attempt to use nonlethal force. Id. at 1130–32, 1137–38.
    These cases bear none of the hallmarks of this case, in
which the officers repeatedly and unsuccessfully tried to use
nonlethal force and were engaged in a lengthy, violent
struggle with a large assailant in a tightly enclosed area, who
                      SMITH V. AGDEPPA                     47

was striking them and who had already gained control of an
officer’s taser. There is no possible sense in which the
precedents the majority cites would have made it “clear to
[Agdeppa] that his conduct was unlawful in the situation he
confronted.” Wesby, 138 S. Ct. at 590 (quotation omitted).
Those precedents are light years away from this one.
Agdeppa is entitled to qualified immunity because “neither
the panel majority nor the [plaintiff has] identified a single
precedent—much less a controlling case or robust consensus
of cases—finding a Fourth Amendment violation ‘under
similar circumstances.’” Wesby, 138 S. Ct. at 591 (quoting
White v. Pauly, 137 S. Ct. 548, 552 (2017) (per curiam)).
    Nor does the rationale of our warning cases apply here,
either. We have said that a warning must be given
“whenever practicable” so that a suspect “who do[es] not
pose an immediate threat” to officer safety “may end his
resistance.” Harris, 126 F.3d at 1204. Dorsey did pose an
immediate threat to officer safety. And he was given
numerous      opportunities—through        repeated    verbal
commands, attempted handcuffing, and taser deployments—
to stop his aggression. This was not the case of a suspect
who was shot before he had a chance to comply. By the
officers’ words and actions, Dorsey was warned throughout
the encounter. He was given numerous opportunities to
stand down, and he instead ramped up his violent resistance.
A suspect in this situation either knows or should know what
can happen next. At the very least, it is not clearly
established that the logic of our warning rule applies when
all past warnings have failed, and a violent situation has
grown more dire.
    I must lastly respond to the majority’s assertion that
Agdeppa has somehow conceded that he had the opportunity
to issue a final warning before he shot Dorsey. The district
48                     SMITH V. AGDEPPA

court, which said virtually nothing about Agdeppa’s failure
to warn (again, the plaintiff barely raised the issue below),
made no such finding. The majority instead seizes on the
fact that Agdeppa stated in his deposition and in a
declaration that he yelled “stop” before shooting. From this,
the majority asserts that “Agdeppa never claimed that it was
not practicable to give a warning,” and goes so far as to assert
that Agdeppa in fact “cannot argue that it was not possible
for Agdeppa to warn Dorsey.” (emphasis added). Once
again, the majority seriously misconstrues the record.
    Agdeppa has never conceded that it was practicable for
him to give a warning for the simple reason that the warning
he claims he gave obviously falls short of the more detailed
warning the majority has in mind. The majority of course
does not tell us what Agdeppa was supposed to have said,
but whatever it was, it was more extensive than “stop.” After
setting up Agdeppa’s own statements as the supposed basis
for the practicability of a further warning, the majority then
remarkably represents that “there is no conflicting evidence
on this point.” But there is extensive undisputed evidence on
this point, most notably the harrowing video and audio
recordings showing this was not a situation in which quaint
notions of “practicability” could have reasonably been at the
forefront of the officers’ minds. Given the recordings and
the BOPC report, the majority cannot feign that we somehow
have no idea what happened in that locker room. The
majority claims that on the bodycam recordings, “there are
only grunting and banging sounds,” but that is demonstrably
incorrect. We know much more than enough to conclude
that the warning obligation the majority imposes was not
clearly established in the circumstances these officers
confronted.
                       SMITH V. AGDEPPA                      49

    Instead, the majority opinion at times seems to imply that
because our warning rule contains a practicability
component, whether a warning was practicable will always
be a question of fact. But that would mean that qualified
immunity should be denied in every case in which an officer
fails to warn, contrary to our case law that “[t]he absence of
a warning does not necessarily mean that [an officer’s] use
of deadly force was unreasonable.” Gonzalez, 747 F.3d at
797. The problem here is not Agdeppa supposedly
conceding away his entire defense—he did no such thing—
but the majority applying a legal rule that, as a matter of law,
cannot serve as clearly established law.
    All of this would be bad enough in any case erroneously
denying qualified immunity, in which the unwarranted
burdens of further litigation are added to the already
burdensome responsibilities that law enforcement officers
undertake in protecting the public. But the dangers of
today’s decision are especially ominous. At what micro-
second interval in the final heated moments of this escalating
confrontation was Agdeppa somehow legally required to hit
the “pause button” and recite some yet-undisclosed, court-
created warning script? The uncertainty the majority
opinion invites stands as a further condemnation of its
holding. And the rule of law it treats as clearly established
on these facts could well make the difference in whether
officers like Agdeppa and Rodriguez make it out of a violent
altercation alive. No clearly established law remotely
requires officers who already put themselves in harm’s way
to do so as riskily as the majority opinion now demands.
    Because these grave consequences result from the
majority’s manifest misapplication of the Supreme Court’s
clear directives on qualified immunity, I respectfully dissent.