have you seen the recent video that was posted showing the police officer shooting at the guide with a hatchet questions you may have is a hatchet treated the same as a gun was that a good shoot as is usually the case with officer-involved shootings it all depends on the facts and I'd love to be able to tell you some brightline rules about what police officers can do and what they cannot do but when it comes to police shooting cases really we're dealing with a self-defense analysis which is highly fact dependent is a hatchet treated differently than a gun yes but it's complicated [Music] so let's take a look at the facts this happened on April 21st 2022 in Jacksonville Florida police had responded to a wooded neighborhood to a report of a man allegedly cutting power to houses among other things and you know actually I'd really like to know what those other things are facts matter the information provided to responding police officers whether or not they actually end up being true are crucial facts the courts will allow officers to rely on what they're told when analyzing whether or not their subsequent actions were reasonable or Not by the way this happened in the 11th federal circuit and police shooting cases the case law can be different depending on which federal circuit you're in I've already researched these facts against 11th circuit existing case law we'll get to that in a minute officers had looked for the guy earlier in the day unsuccessfully then they received another call at around 11 30 a.m reporting that the man had returned and was continuing to vandalize houses in the area it's unclear to me whether or not they had identified who this guy was prior to actually encountering him if so he did have an extensive criminal history that did indicate that he could be dangerous if not then they were just encountering a man who may or may not be the guy who they were looking for the body cam footage released a few days ago shows the officer locate the man and then walk towards him is that him he notices that the man is holding a hatchet it's also unclear whether there was information provided beforehand before this moment that the guy had a hatchet put the hatchet down put the ax down he orders the man to drop the hatchet the man says no he again orders him to drop the hatchet put the ax down put the ax down instead of dropping it the man raises the hatchet near his head then the officer shoots him firing one shot that killed him 1033 shots fired here are the important facts as I see them the man with the hatchet was not advancing towards the officer he was not threatening the officer there appeared to be a good bit of distance between the officer and the man with the hatchet very little time elapsed between the officer asking the man or ordering the man to drop the hatchet and then the shot being fired seconds really last but not least just prior to the shot being fired the man did raise the hatchet up next to his head but he didn't throw the hatchet at least not yet there have been many cases where the subject or the suspect refuses to drop a gun and a shot there was also a recent one in the 11th circuit which is the applicable circuit for Florida where the homeowner was shot by police while he was investigating a potential Prowler outside his home that Prowler ended up being a police officer who shot him from the darkness basically without even a warning and I made a video about that case that was the snook case really tragic circumstance but here we don't have a gun but rather a hatchet now hatchets can be thrown obviously does that mean it's basically a gun believe it or not the 11th circuit actually does already have a hatchet case that case is Shaw versus city of Selma 11th circuit from 2018. in that case the Court held that an officer can use deadly force against a mentally unstable man who had a hatchet in his hand and was advancing on the officer the man had not raised a hatchet in that case at the time that he was shot but the court gave the officer qualified immunity anyways the Court held that a reasonable officer could have concluded that he didn't have to wait until the hatchet was being swung towards him before firing in self-defense basically an officer can use deadly force when he has probable cause to believe that his own life is in Peril but in that case he was known to have threatened customers at a Church's Chicken just a few days before he ignored more than two dozen orders by the police officer to drop the hatch two dozen and at the time he was shot he was advancing on the officer with his Hatchet in his hand he was literally only a few feet away from the police officer who shot him and was close enough at that time to have struck the officer within the next few seconds with the hatchet in other words the court concluded that the officer who fired the shot was objectively an imminent Peril of death or serious bodily injury at the time the shot was fired these facts in the shawl case are a little bit different than we have in the present situation there's a 2016 case also out of the 11th circuit that's cited by the court in Shaw that could be important here the case is the Perez case from 2016. and it says that the mere presence of a gun or other weapon is not by itself enough to Warrant the exercise of deadly force and give qualified immunity to a police officer so where the weapon was located what type of weapon it was and what was happening with that weapon or all things that are crucial for the court to determine whether or not firing the shot was justified again we must determine whether the officer's use of deadly force was objectively reasonable that standard depends on whether the suspect posed a threat of serious physical harm with an emphasis on the level and the immediacy of that threat so although the presence or absence of a weapon is a factor in the analysis it's merely one element the ultimate determination depends on the level of risk presented evaluating the totality of the circumstances surrounding that weapon in other words what kind of weapon it was and considering that question the court takes into account the fact that guns are for example completely different than knives they're both weapons but there's a different level and immediacy of a threat post for instance a person standing six feet away from a police officer with a knife may present a very different threat than a person six feet away with a gun well here there can really be no doubt that the suspect here was well more than six feet away from the police officer and it wasn't a knife but rather a hatchet and now that we have all these Hatchet throwing places all over to be now assumed that a hatchet is more capable of being thrown accurately than a knife here's another other question what if the guy does throw the hatchet and as the hatchet is flying through the air then the officer shoots if the guy was armed with a hatchet and he throws it he then becomes an unarmed suspect assuming he has only one Hatchet that really wouldn't be any different than a suspect firing a gun and then throwing the gun out of reach at the end of the day here the facts as provided by the body cam footage shows that for this police officer to reasonably believe that his life was in Barrel that his life was in danger we have to assume that given the distance involved and the other facts known that this suspect could have effectively thrown that hatchet and struck the officer and that seems to me to be a stretch literally we learned this in the old days where we fought with tomahawks you don't throw your Tomahawk why because you're unarmed and defenseless at that point it's a One-Shot throw and most of the weapon is a wooden handle some different size examples I mean here's a little Hatchet and here's a bigger Hatchet I mean if you're throwing this it would be it's almost impossible to actually even stick it into a Target unless you've practiced at that distance over and over and over again I mean it's just really highly unlikely based on that in my opinion I think it is a badge was there a threat there yes was a threat sufficiently imminent and dangerous to justify a fatal shooting no but it's a close enough case especially with the shaw opinion that you have there in the 11th circuit I think he does get qualified immunity here but it's a close enough case my opinion it should be up to a jury to decide ask yourself had one of the local homeowners encountered this guy and did the same exact thing would he have been prosecuted self-defense is self-defense at the end of the day it requires an immediate threat to be reasonable I highly doubt that law enforcement would give the same benefit of the doubt to a civilian shooter here's another old trial lawyer trick for a closing argument that I think can illustrate well the issues that we have if we have the ability if we had theoretically the ability to create our own facts what other facts could we create here that would make this shooting more reasonable all right let's list some let's say the suspect threatened the officer with a hatchet let's say the man Advanced on the officer with a hatchet let's say there was a closer proximity between the two such as a few feet between the officer and the suspect so close that he would the officer would be in Striking Distance let's say that the officer gave a clear warning that the officer would shoot the guy in the head if he didn't drop the ax rather than just ordering him to drop the ax and I could go on these facts we can't create them they're just not present but then again there are some scary videos out there showing how quickly a crazy guy with a knife can hurt a bunch of people even while the cops are shooting at him maybe a hatchet could do even worse but at the end of the day I think the Court's rule that this is a good shoot there's no chance of criminal charges here maybe a civil suit is filed if so I give it probably maybe 10 chance likelihood of succeeding sorry I'm not sure I left you any better than I found you educationally speaking but here are some takeaways to remember one the mere presence of a weapon does not alone justify deadly force two not all weapons are treated equally by the courts and reviewing the reasonableness of police shootings different weapons have different capabilities and that will be taken into account three deadly force cannot be used unless someone's life is an imminent danger and lastly number four the reasonableness of that belief of imminent danger is an objective one an objective standard as always thanks for subscribing and watching I have some big things in the works if you have a video to submit please use the link in the description you can also follow me on Facebook and Twitter also make sure to subscribe to the email updates on the blog at the Civil Rights lawyer.com remember freedom is scary deal with it foreign [Music]