Court Opinion

ID: 9458580
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:56:19.279887+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:49.155391
License: Public Domain

McCREE, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
I agree with the result reached by the court’s opinion to the extent that it represents a conclusion that the District Court properly determined that no constitutionally protected right of appellant was violated because the officers employed force reasonably proportionate to the interests sought to be protected. The facts of this case present an example of a situation in which courts should not second-guess police officers who, faced with making split-second decisions, reasonably and in good faith believe that their lives or those of third persons would be endangered if they refrain from employing deadly force to attempt to apprehend fleeing felons whose arrest cannot reasonably be accomplished by less dangerous means. Because I believe that the officers’ conduct satisfied constitutional standards in this case, I do not find it necessary to reach the question whether the Tennessee statute under the authority of which the officers acted is constitutional or whether its existence provides a qualified immunity to the officers. See Pierson v. Ray, 386 U.S. 547, 87 S.Ct. 1213, 18 L.Ed.2d 288 (1967). I prefer to reserve judgment on the question of the constitutionality of such a statute as applied to a situation in which the alleged felon has not committed a crime that poses a threat of death or serious bodily harm to other persons, and has not indicated by his subsequent behavior in avoiding arrest that he will pose -a similar threat to members of the community if he is allowed to escape. For example, I would find it difficult to uphold as constitutional a statute that allowed police offi*427cers to shoot, after an unheeded warning to halt, a fleeing income tax evader, antitrust law violator, selective service delinquent, or other person whose arrest might be sought for the commission of any one of a variety of other felonies of a type not normally involving danger of death or serious bodily harm.