Court Opinion

ID: 9479970
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:33:58.384849+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:47:23.867148
License: Public Domain

MERRITT, Chief Judge,
concurring.
I agree with the result reached by the Court, and I also agree with the Court’s reasoning in Sections I and III of its opinion. But I see no need for the discussion on reasonableness in Section II because there was a jury issue here, and the District Court put the ease to the jury. Since no complaint is made about the instructions, the jury verdict should stand.
This is a case that should have gone to the jury on the use of excessive force under the Fourth Amendment. We need not suggest how we ourselves would decide the “reasonableness” issue under the Fourth Amendment. The jury has decided that *279issue, and we need not analyze it further than to agree that it was a jury issue.
Accordingly, I see no need for the discussion in Section II of the Court’s opinion, and I decline to go along with it because I am not sure I agree with everything in it. I have difficulty, for example, with the view that everything the officer did with his weapon was “objectively reasonable” under the Fourth Amendment. I tend to believe the officer’s conduct was negligent, perhaps reckless; but I agree with District Judge Duggan that the question should have been left to the jury. Moreover, it may be that the constitutional tort at issue here is an “intentional” tort requiring an intent to bring about the result. If so, negligence is not sufficient. See Brower v. County of Inyo, — U.S. -, 109 S.Ct. 1378, 1381-82, 103 L.Ed.2d 628 (1989), in which the Court says that the constitutional tort under the Fourth Amendment requires “termination of freedom of movement through means intentionally applied,” but then explains that “we cannot draw too fine a line” between intent and negligence. In my judgment, our Court need not decide that question in the present case since no issue is made of the jury instructions on intent.