Court Opinion

ID: 9926212
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-01-24 01:00:41.171192+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:22:11.544977
License: Public Domain

Case: 22-20519     Document: 00517041854          Page: 1     Date Filed: 01/23/2024

           United States Court of Appeals
                for the Fifth Circuit                           United States Court of Appeals
                                                                         Fifth Circuit
                                ____________                           FILED
                                                                January 23, 2024
                                  No. 22-20519
                                                                  Lyle W. Cayce
                                ____________
                                                                       Clerk

   Janice Hughes Barnes, Individually and as Representative of the
   Estate of Ashtian Barnes, Deceased; Tommy Duane Barnes,

                                                            Plaintiffs—Appellants,

                                       versus

   Roberto Felix, Jr.; County of Harris, Texas,

                                           Defendants—Appellees.
                  ______________________________

                  Appeal from the United States District Court
                      for the Southern District of Texas
                            USDC No. 4:18-CV-725
                  ______________________________

   Before Higginbotham, Smith, and Elrod, Circuit Judges.
   Patrick E. Higginbotham, Circuit Judge:
          Officer Roberto Felix, Jr., a traffic enforcement officer for the Harris
   County Precinct 5 Constable’s Office, fatally shot Ashtian Barnes on April
   28, 2016, following a lawful traffic stop. Appellants Janice Hughes Barnes and
   Tommy Duane Barnes filed suit on behalf of Barnes, their son, asserting
   claims against defendants Officer Felix and Harris County under
   42 U.S.C. § 1983. The district court granted Defendants’ motion for sum-
   mary judgment, finding no Fourth Amendment constitutional violation.
   Faithful to this Circuit’s moment of threat doctrine, we AFFIRM.
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                                        No. 22-20519

                                              I.
                                             A.
           Officer Roberto Felix, Jr. fatally shot Ashtian Barnes on April 28,
   2016, following a lawful traffic stop. The facts leading up to the shooting are
   undisputed. At about 2:40 p.m., Officer Felix heard a radio broadcast from
   the Harris County Toll Road Authority giving the license plate number of a
   vehicle on the highway with outstanding toll violations. Spotting a Toyota
   Corolla with the matching plate on the Tollway, he initiated a traffic stop by
   engaging his emergency lights. Ashtian Barnes, the driver, pulled over to the
   median on the left side of the Tollway out of the immediate traffic zone.
   Officer Felix parked his car behind the Corolla.
           Officer Felix approached the driver’s side window and asked Barnes
   for his driver’s license and proof of insurance. Barnes replied that he did not
   have the documentation and that the car had been rented a week earlier in his
   girlfriend’s name. During this interaction, Barnes was “digging around” in
   the car. Officer Felix warned Barnes to stop doing so and, claiming that he
   smelled marijuana, asked Barnes if he had anything in the vehicle Officer
   Felix should know about. In response, Barnes turned off the vehicle, placing
   his keys near the gear shift, and told Officer Felix that he “might” have the
   requested documentation in the trunk of the car. What happened next was
   captured on Officer Felix’s dash cam. The district court found: 1

           _____________________
           1
             “Much of the incident, including its unfortunate conclusion, was recorded by
   video cameras. Although courts must construe evidence in light most favorable to the
   nonmoving party, we will not adopt a plaintiff’s characterization of the facts where
   unaltered video evidence contradicts that account.” Thompson v. Mercer, 762 F.3d 433, 435
   (5th Cir. 2014) (citing Scott v. Harris, 550 U.S. 372, 381 (2007)).

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                                          No. 22-20519

           • At 2:45:28, Felix orders Barnes to open the trunk of his
               vehicle. At this time, Barnes’s left blinker is still on,
               indicating that the keys are still in the ignition.
           • At 2:45:33, Barnes opens the trunk of the vehicle.
           • At 2:45:36, Barnes’s left blinker turns off.
           • At 2:45:43, Felix asks Barnes to get out of the vehicle.
           • At 2:45:44, Barnes’s driver side door opens.
           • At 2:45:47, Barnes’s left blinker turns back on.
           • At 2:45:48, Felix draws his weapon.
           • At 2:45:49, Felix points his weapon at Barnes and begins
               shouting “don’t fucking move” as Barnes’s vehicle begins
               moving.
           At this point, Officer Felix stepped onto the car with his weapon
   drawn and pointed at Barnes, and—as Appellants claim and as supported by
   the footage—“shoved” his gun into Barnes’s head, pushing his head hard to
   the right. Then, the car started to move. While the car was moving, Officer
   Felix shot inside the vehicle with “no visibility” as to where he was aiming. 2
   The next second, Officer Felix fired another shot while the vehicle was still
   moving. After two seconds, the vehicle came to a full stop, and Officer Felix
   yelled “shots fired!” into his radio. Officer Felix held Barnes at gunpoint
   until backup arrived while Barnes sat bleeding in the driver’s seat. At 2:57
   p.m., Barnes was pronounced dead at the scene.
           The Homicide Division of the Houston Police Department
   investigated and presented a report to the Harris County District Attorney’s
   Office, who presented the report to a grand jury on August 26 and August 31,

           _____________________
           2
            Officer Felix had “no visibility,” i.e., could not see into the car, because his head
   was outside and above the roof of the car while he held on to the car frame.

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                                         No. 22-20519

   2016. The grand jury returned a “no bill;” that is, it found no probable cause
   for an indictment. Harris County Precinct 5 Constable’s Office also
   conducted an internal investigation and found that Officer Felix had not
   violated its Standard Operating Procedures.
                                                   B.
          Appellants Janice Hughes Barnes and Tommy Duane Barnes, Ashtian
   Barnes’s parents, filed suit on December 29, 2017, in state court on behalf of
   their son, asserting claims against defendants Officer Felix and Harris
   County under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and the Texas Tort Claims Act. 3 Defendants
   removed the action to federal district court on March 7, 2018.
          Defendants moved for summary judgment, arguing that Officer Felix
   did not violate Barnes’s constitutional rights and was entitled to qualified
   immunity. Defendants argued that because Officer Felix reasonably feared
   for his life when Barnes’s vehicle was moving, it was reasonable to deploy
   deadly force. In response, Plaintiffs argued Officer Felix’s use of force was
   unreasonable because, even if Barnes attempted to flee the scene, he did not
   pose a threat justifying deadly force.
          The district court granted Defendants’ motion for summary judgment
   and found that there was no genuine dispute of fact material as to
   constitutional injury. First, the district court found that, although there were
   some inconsistencies as to Officer Felix’s “motivations” for shooting
   Barnes, the dash cam footage resolved all lingering genuine disputes of
   material fact. According to the district court, “Plaintiffs have not cited any

          _____________________
          3
              On appeal, Appellants have abandoned their claims under the Texas Torts Claims
   Act.

                                               4
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                                       No. 22-20519

   evidence that would obfuscate the events depicted in the dash cam
   recording.” It explained:
          [T]he dash cam footage shows that Felix did not draw his
          weapon until Barnes turned his vehicle back on despite Felix’s
          order to exit the vehicle. Regardless of whether Felix drew his
          weapon before or after the vehicle started moving, Plaintiffs
          offer no lawful explanation for Barnes turning his car back on
          after Felix ordered him to exit the vehicle.
          Second, the court found that Officer Felix’s actions prior to the
   moment of threat, including that Officer Felix “jumped onto the door sill,”
   had “no bearing” on the officer’s ultimate use of force. Third, the court
   determined that the moment of threat occurred in the two seconds before
   Barnes was shot. At that time, “[Officer] Felix was still hanging onto the
   moving vehicle and believed it would run him over,” which could have made
   Officer Felix “reasonably believe his life was in imminent danger.”
          Ultimately, the district court found that because “Barnes posed a
   threat of serious harm to Officer Felix” in the moment the car began to move,
   Officer Felix’s use of deadly force was not excessive, “presumptively
   reasonable under controlling Fifth Circuit precedent,” and did not cause a
   constitutional injury. Finding no genuine dispute of material fact as to the
   constitutional injury, the district court granted Officer Felix’s motion for
   summary judgment. The district court also dismissed the claim against
   Defendant Harris County. On August 8, 2022, the district court issued an
   order clarifying that there was “no genuine issue of material fact as to
   whether [Officer] Felix violated Barnes’s Fourth Amendment rights when he
   pointed his firearm at Barnes[.]” 4

          _____________________
          4
            Appellants only appeal the first grant of summary judgment, not the subsequent
   August 8, 2022 order.

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                                        No. 22-20519

           Appellant Janice Hughes Barnes timely appealed on September 28,
   2022, claiming: (1) the district court erred in concluding that there was no
   dispute of material fact because there were inconsistencies between the dash
   cam video and Felix’s own statements and testimony; and (2) the district
   court erred in granting summary judgment because the facts as alleged were
   sufficient to find that Officer Felix violated Barnes’s constitutional rights as
   a matter of law.
          Appellant Tommy Duane Barnes timely filed a separate, pro se brief
   on February 7, 2023, incorporating “the findings of Adam Fomby” and
   alleging claims near identical to those of Appellant Janice Barnes’s.
   Defendants do not address Tommy Barnes’s pro se brief.
                                             II.
          On summary judgment, the movant must show that “there is no
   genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment
   as a matter of law;” the court reviews the evidence in the light most favorable
   to the nonmoving party and draws all reasonable inferences in its favor. 5
                                            III.
           Bound by this Circuit’s precedent, we affirm the district court’s order
   holding that there is no genuine dispute of material fact as to constitutional
   injury. As the district court explained, we may only ask whether Officer Felix
   “was in danger ‘at the moment of the threat’ that caused him to use deadly
   force against Barnes.” In this circuit, “it is well-established that the
   excessive-force inquiry is confined to whether the officers or other persons
   were in danger at the moment of the threat that resulted in the officers’ use

           _____________________
           5
            FED. R. CIV. P. 56(a); see also Deville v. Marcantel, 567 F.3d 156, 163–64 (5th
   Cir. 2009) (per curiam).

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                                           No. 22-20519

   of deadly force.” 6 This “moment of threat” test means that “the focus of
   the inquiry should be on the act that led the officer to discharge his weapon.” 7
   “Any of the officers’ actions leading up to the shooting are not relevant for
   the purposes of an excessive force inquiry in this Circuit.” 8
          The district court here determined that the moment of threat
   occurred in the two seconds before Barnes was shot. At that time, “[Officer]
   Felix was still hanging onto the moving vehicle and believed it would run him
   over,” which could have made Officer Felix “reasonably believe his life was
   in imminent danger.” Harmon v. City of Arlington presented a similar fact
   pattern, in which an officer was perched on the running board of a runaway
   vehicle when the officer shot the fleeing driver. 9 Finding no constitutional
   violation, the opinion noted that the “brief interval—when [the officer] is
   clinging to the accelerating SUV and draws his pistol on the driver—is what
   the court must consider to determine whether [the officer] reasonably
   believed he was at risk of serious physical harm.” 10 Similarly here, Officer
   Felix was still hanging on to the moving vehicle when he shot Barnes. Under
   Harmon’s application of our Circuit’s “moment of threat” test, Felix did not
   violate Barnes’s constitutional rights. We focus on the precise moment of the
   threat as required and affirm the district court’s judgment.
                                                IV.
          One of the required elements of a municipal liability claim is a showing
   of a “violation of constitutional rights whose moving force is the policy or
          _____________________
          6
              Amador v. Vasquez, 961 F.3d 721, 728 (5th Cir. 2020).
          7
              Id. (cleaned up).
          8
              Harris v. Serpas, 745 F.3d 767, 772 (5th Cir. 2014) (cleaned up).
          9
              Harmon v. City of Arlington, 16 F.4th 1159, 1162 (5th Cir. 2021).
          10
               Id. at 1164.

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                                        No. 22-20519

   custom [of the municipality].” 11 As the district court found no constitutional
   injury, it rightfully did not reach the Barnes’ municipal liability claim.
   Finding no constitutional injury ourselves, we affirm the grant of summary
   judgment to Harris County.
                                          *****
           Faithful to Circuit precedent on the moment of threat analysis, we
   AFFIRM the district court’s judgment.

           _____________________
           11
             Horvath v. City of Leander, 946 F.3d 787, 793 (5th Cir. 2020) (citing Rivera v.
   Hous. Indep. Sch. Dist., 349 F.3d 244, 247 (5th Cir. 2003)).

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                                          No. 22-20519

   Patrick E. Higginbotham, Circuit Judge, concurring:
          A routine traffic stop has again ended in the death of an unarmed black
   man, and again we cloak a police officer with qualified immunity, shielding
   his liability. The district court rightfully found that its reasonableness analysis
   under the Fourth Amendment was circumscribed to the “precise moment”
   at which Officer Felix decided to use deadly force against Barnes. I write
   separately to express my concern with this Circuit’s moment of threat
   doctrine, as it counters the Supreme Court’s instruction to look to the totality
   of the circumstances when assessing the reasonableness of an officer’s use of
   deadly force.
          To these eyes, blinding an officer’s role in bringing about the “threat”
   precipitating the use of deadly force lessens the Fourth Amendment’s
   protection of the American public, devalues human life, and “frustrates the
   interest of the individual, and of society, in judicial determination of guilt and
   punishment.” 1 Tennessee v. Garner’s 2 stricture on the taking of a life only to
   protect one’s life or the life of another is the baseline of the Supreme Court’s
   later validation of pretextual stops in Whren v. United States, 3 and in the
   following term Maryland v. Wilson, allowing an officer without more than

          _____________________
          1
            Abraham v. Raso rejected reasoning in prior cases that prevented the court from
   considering any of the circumstances before the exact moment deadly force is used:
          We reject the reasoning . . . because we do not see how these cases can
          reconcile the Supreme Court’s rule requiring examination of the “totality
          of the circumstances” with a rigid rule that excludes all context and causes
          prior to the moment the seizure is finally accomplished. “Totality” is an
          encompassing word. It implies that reasonableness should be sensitive to
          all of the factors bearing on the officer’s use of force.
          183 F.3d 279, 288 (3d Cir. 1999).
          2
              471 U.S. 1, 21 (1985).
          3
              517 U.S. 806, 810 (1996).

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                                           No. 22-20519

   pretext to order the driver of the then lawfully stopped car to exit their
   vehicle. 4 Sound on their face but unforeseen in their future came the reality
   that these cases brought fuel to a surge of deadly encounters between the
   police and civilians. 5 This reality makes plain the wisdom of Garner’s
   baseline and that it ought not be further redrawn by refusing to look to the
   totality of the circumstances when a stop leads to the taking of a life.
                                                 I.
           Barnes was stopped for a traffic violation—his girlfriend’s rental car
   had several outstanding toll tag violations, none of which are arrestable
   offenses under Section 370.177 of the Texas Transportation Code. 6 While
   Barnes was not then a fleeing felon at the moment Officer Felix deployed
   deadly force, the starting point of the requisite Fourth Amendment analysis
   must still be Garner, which announced the bedrock principle that it is
   unreasonable for an officer to use deadly force to stop a fleeing suspect unless
   the suspect poses an immediate physical danger to the officer or others. 7 To

           _____________________
           4
               519 U.S. 408 (1997).
           5
            “Today, traffic stops and the use of deadly force are too often one and the same—
   with Black and Latino drivers overrepresented among those killed—and have been
   sanctioned by numerous counties and major police departments.” Crane v. City of
   Arlington, No. 21-10644, 2022 WL 4592035, at *1 (5th Cir. Sept. 30, 2022) (citation
   omitted); Sam Levin, US Police Have Killed Nearly 600 People in Traffic Stops Since 2017,
   Data Shows, GUARDIAN (Apr. 21, 2022), https://www.theguardian.com/us-
   news/2022/apr/21/us-police-violence-traffic-stop-data.
           6
             TEX. TRANSP. CODE ANN. § 370.177 (“[T]he operator of a vehicle, other than an
   authorized emergency vehicle as defined by Section 541.201, that is driven or towed
   through a toll collection facility of a turnpike project shall pay the proper toll. The operator
   of a vehicle who drives or tows a vehicle through a toll collection facility and does not pay
   the proper toll commits an offense. An offense under this subsection is a misdemeanor
   punishable by a fine not to exceed $250.”)
           7
               471 U.S. at 21.

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                                            No. 22-20519

   assess whether Officer Felix was justified in his use of deadly force, Garner
   requires this Court to look to the “totality of circumstances.” 8 Yet we do not.
           We, and three of our sister courts, have narrowed the totality of
   circumstances inquiry by circumscribing the reasonableness analysis of the
   Fourth Amendment to the precise millisecond at which an officer deploys
   deadly force. 9 “[Our] excessive force inquiry is confined to whether the
   [officer] was in danger at the moment of the threat that resulted in the
   [officer]’s shooting. 10 Under this “moment of threat” doctrine, courts are
   prohibited from looking to “what has transpired up until the moment of the
   shooting itself[;]” 11 instead, the sole focus is on “the act that led the officer[]
   to discharge his weapon.” 12 The moment of threat doctrine trims Garner
   with predictable results: by cabining the Court’s analysis, it turns to the issue
   of qualified immunity after eliding the reality of the role the officers played in
   bringing about the conditions said to necessitate deadly force. “Necessity,”
   either to protect an officer or another, requires that we be sensitive to all of
   the circumstances bearing on an officer’s use of force. Revisiting our
   Circuit’s precedents on the moment of threat would only return this Circuit
   to Garner’s metric of necessity—a totality of the circumstances.

           _____________________
           8
                Id. at 9.
           9
            The district court found “‘the moment of the threat’ occurred after Felix jumped
   onto the door sill about 2:45:50, in the two seconds before Felix fired his first shot.”
           10
              Bazan ex rel. Bazan v. Hidalgo Cnty., 246 F.3d 481, 493 (5th Cir. 2001) (citing
   Fraire v. City of Arlington, 957 F.2d 1268, 1276 (5th Cir. 1992)).
           11
                Fraire, 957 F.2d at 1267.
           12
                Amador v. Vasquez, 961 F.3d 721, 728 (5th Cir. 2020).

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                                           No. 22-20519

                                                 II.
           The Fifth Circuit’s approach to the reasonableness analysis is the
   minority position, joined by the Second, Fourth, and Eighth Circuits. Indeed,
   a majority of circuits have adopted a distinct framework for assessing the
   reasonableness of an officer’s use of deadly force. 13

           _____________________
           13
               See, e.g., St. Hilaire v. City of Laconia, 71 F.3d 20, 26 (1st Cir. 1995) (“We first
   reject defendants’ analysis that the police officers’ actions need be examined for
   ‘reasonableness’ under the Fourth Amendment only at the moment of the shooting. We
   believe that view is inconsistent with Supreme Court decisions and with the law of this
   Circuit.”); Carswell v. Borough of Homestead, 381 F.3d 235, 243 (3d Cir. 2004) (“All of the
   events leading up to the pursuit of the suspect are relevant.”); Abraham v. Raso, 183 F.3d
   279, 292 (3d Cir. 1999) (considering the totality of circumstances even in the context of
   deadly force); Kirby v. Duva, 530 F.3d 475, 482 (6th Cir. 2008) (“Where a police officer
   unreasonably places himself in harm’s way, his use of deadly force may be deemed
   excessive.”); Est. of Starks v. Enyart, 5 F.3d 230, 234 (7th Cir. 1993) (“If a fleeing felon is
   converted to a ‘threatening’ fleeing felon solely based on the actions of a police officer, the
   police should not increase the degree of intrusiveness.”); Vos v. City of Newport Beach, 892
   F.3d 1024, 1034 (9th Cir. 2018) (“While a Fourth Amendment violation cannot be
   established ‘based merely on bad tactics that result in a deadly confrontation that could
   have been avoided,’ the events leading up to the shooting, including the officers [sic]
   tactics, are encompassed in the facts and circumstances for the reasonableness analysis.”)
   (internal citations omitted); Fogarty v. Gallegos, 523 F.3d 1147, 1159–60 (10th Cir. 2008)
   (“[W]e must pay ‘careful attention’ to factors such as ‘the severity of the crime at issue,
   whether the suspect poses an immediate threat to the safety of the officers and others, and
   whether he is actively resisting arrest or attempting to evade arrest by flight.’ We also
   consider whether an officer’s own ‘reckless or deliberate conduct’ in connection with the
   arrest contributed to the need to use the force employed.”) (citations omitted) (internal
   citation omitted) (cleaned up); Ayers v. Harrison, 650 F. App’x 709, 719 (11th Cir. 2016)
   (“Officer Harrison’s argument that our precedent precluded Ms. Ayers from advancing an
   ‘officer created danger’ theory at trial is both factually and legally incorrect.”); Wardlaw v.
   Pickett, 1 F.3d 1297, 1303 (D.C. Cir. 1993) (“[W]hatever the circumstances prompting law
   enforcement officers to use force, whether it be self-defense, defense of another or
   resistance to arrest, where, as here, a fourth amendment violation is alleged, the inquiry
   remains whether the force applied was reasonable.”). But see Salim v. Proulx, 93 F.3d 86,
   92 (2d Cir. 1996) (“Officer Proulx’s actions leading up to the shooting are irrelevant to the
   objective reasonableness of his conduct at the moment he decided to employ deadly
   force.”); Waterman v. Batton, 393 F.3d 471, 477 (4th Cir. 2005) (“The reasonableness of
   the officer’s actions in creating the dangerous situation is not relevant to the Fourth

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                                           No. 22-20519

           Whether an officer’s use of force was excessive is “necessarily [a]
   fact-intensive” endeavor that “depends on the facts and circumstances of
   each particular case.” 14 As the Supreme Court observed in Scott v. Harris,
   the Fourth Amendment analysis is necessarily a “factbound morass of
   reasonableness.” 15 Yet the moment of threat doctrine starves the
   reasonableness analysis by ignoring relevant facts to the expense of life. The
   case before us is paradigmatic: we are prohibited from considering Officer
   Felix’s decision to jump onto the sill of the vehicle with his gun already
   drawn, and—in the span of two seconds—his decision to elevate and fire his
   handgun into the vehicle—this for driving with an outstanding toll violation.
   Officer Felix’s role in escalating the encounter is “irrelevant” in our Circuit.
           If the moment of threat is the sole determinative factor in our
   reasonableness analysis, references to our supposed obligation to consider
   the totality of circumstances are merely performative. 16 Isolating the police-
   civilian encounter to the moment of threat begs the Garner question. That is,
   the moment of threat approach removes the consideration of the entire

           _____________________
   Amendment analysis; rather, reasonableness is determined based on the information
   possessed by the officer at the moment that force is employed.”) (citations omitted); Banks
   v. Hawkins, 999 F.3d 521, 525–26 (8th Cir. 2021), cert. denied, 142 S. Ct. 2674 (2022) (“In
   any event, we evaluate the reasonableness of Hawkins’s conduct by looking primarily at the
   threat present at the time he deployed the deadly force.”) (citation omitted).
           14
             Amador, 961 F.3d at 727 (quoting Darden v. City of Fort Worth, Tex., 880 F.3d
   722, 728 (5th Cir. 2018)).
           15
                550 U.S. 372, 383 (2007) (cleaned up).
           16
              See id. at 728 (“Considering the totality of the circumstances, focusing on the act
   that led the officers to discharge their weapons, and without reviewing the district court’s
   decision that genuine factual disputes exist, see Kinney v. Weaver, 367 F.3d 337, 348 (5th
   Cir. 2004), we conclude that the genuine issues of material fact identified by the district
   court are material, and this case should proceed to trial.”).

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                                     No. 22-20519

   circumstances required by Garner, including the gravity of the offense at
   issue.
                                          III.
            Here, given the rapid sequence of events and Officer Felix’s role in
   drawing his weapon and jumping on the running board, the totality of the
   circumstances merits finding that Officer Felix violated Barnes’s Fourth
   Amendment right to be free from excessive force. This officer stepped on the
   running board of the car and shot Barnes within two seconds, lest he get away
   with driving his girlfriend’s rental car with an outstanding toll fee. It is plain
   that the use of lethal force against this unarmed man preceded any real threat
   to Officer Felix’s safety—that Barnes’s decision to flee was made before
   Officer Felix stepped on the running board. His flight prompted Officer Felix
   to jump on the running board and fire within two seconds. This case should
   have enjoyed full review of the totality of the circumstances. The moment of
   threat doctrine is an impermissible gloss on Garner that stifles a robust
   examination of the Fourth Amendment’s protections for the American
   public. It is time for this Court to revisit this doctrine, failing that, for the
   Supreme Court to resolve the circuit divide over the application of a doctrine
   deployed daily across this country.

                                          14