in june of 2016 in henry county georgia police sergeant patrick snook arrived at the wrong house and shot and killed innocent homeowner william david powell standing in his driveway the northern district of georgia the federal trial court granted qualified immunity to the police officer his widow appealed to the u.s 11th circuit court of appeals and they just issued a published opinion on february 8th finding that the officer should have qualified immunity so this is a case that every homeowner every gun owner every american citizen should read this is one of the biggest dangers of living in a police state i'm going to put the entire opinion up on the website at the civil rights lawyer.com please read it for yourself i don't want to just read it to you and create a boring video here so my goal here is to put you on notice that this happened that this case is out there and for you to read it for yourself now just generally the the law and police shooting cases it all comes down to the famous case of tennessee versus garner that is the notorious fleeing felon case where the police were able to shoot a fleeing felon in the back and get away with it and it's still cited all the time as being the source of the fleeing felon rule but anyways it lays out three different three different things to consider when you're in court on the reasonableness or the justification of a police shooting so an officer may use deadly force when number one he has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a threat of serious physical harm either to the officer or to others or that he's committed a crime involving the infliction or threatened infliction of serious physical harm that's the first factor of the so-called garner factors second factor is that reasonably believes that the use of deadly force was necessary to prevent the escape and number three has given some warning about the possible use of deadly force if feasible again that's from tennessee versus garner u.s supreme court case so generally courts federal courts across the country use those so-called garner factors to assess the reasonableness of deadly force when used by police against citizens i'll note that the courts have held that the mere presence of a gun or other weapon at the scene is not by itself sufficient to warrant the use of deadly force by police what was at issue here in this case is the plaintiffs and this was a civil lawsuit this was not a criminal case the plaintiff claimed that a warning should have been given so the police showed up at this homeowner's house they never had their blue lights on they were in uniforms but it was late at night they were in the dark there was no warning no blue lights again undisputedly the homeowner did not know that it was the police they realized something was going on outside i believe dogs were barking they opened the garage door the husband walks out first pistol in his hand his wife was following him he's looking around in the dark again nobody said anything he appears to have seen something he starts to raise his hand that's holding the gun and boom officer snook hiding in the dark crouched down on a knee fires his ar and shoots ultimately killing the innocent homeowner there were no warnings given federal lawsuit ensues so the court goes through the analysis of whether police always have to give a warning prior to shooting and that was the claim in the lawsuit they concluded that the case law didn't say that garner actually says if you look at the third element if feasible so then you turn to the facts of the particular case the facts in this case according to the court's ruling here says that they did not have to give warnings because it wasn't feasible because there wasn't enough time it all happened so quickly and a police officer was confronted with somebody whether they're innocent or not whether the homeowner or not they're confronted with somebody raising a pistol and their direction now i i think this is an awful ruling i i can point out to you a ruling that went much better in the fourth circuit but what the takeaway from this is is that there is no brightline rule that police have to give a warning before firing they do have to give a warning if feasible so the key is as a plaintiff trying to hold the police accountable in court for an unjustified shooting they have to create these factual disputes they have to establish during the discovery stage to show to the judges that look there it was feasible there was enough time to give a warning it was feasible here i don't believe that those facts were presented there has to be a factual dispute presented to the court showing that uh that maybe the gun wasn't pointed in the officer's direction so if if the homeowner did not point a gun at the officer then it very well is going to go a different way and that's really what happened in a fourth circuit case that i've talked about before from 2019 it's called betten versus bellew b-e-l-u-e again fourth circuit 2019 in a very very similar case where a homeowner hears what ends up being cops snooping around outside his house it's dark there's no blue lights on there's no verbal warning or anything like that he steps out onto his front porch holding a shotgun even without a warning they end up shooting him and the fourth circuit took the the cops to task finding that they acted unreasonably that in in shooting him without a warning or identifying themselves first they violated the fourth amendment and that that was excessive force now one possible difference here different circuits can rule differently and that's why we have the supreme court to decide um you know disputes between the circuits but there was one major difference in the betten case than we have here in this ruling that came out on the 8th and that is in the betten case there was a dispute about whether or not the homeowner the homeowner ever pointed a gun so that is for a jury to decide so the court has to go with the plaintiffs evidence that the homeowner didn't point the gun at the officers that he walked out on his porch that that was a reasonable thing to do and he ended up getting shot by some cops standing in the dark and they're the ones who acted unreasonably because they should have said they were the police first before shooting them so it's in the end it's up to a jury to decide whether or not it should be any ways whether or not the homeowner pointed the gun at the police it should be for up to a jury to decide whether or not the officers acted reasonable so the your duty in a excessive force civil lawsuit is to develop those facts to show that the officer there's evidence that the officers did not act reasonably so there was time to give a warning to say hey we're the police don't point a gun at us or drop the gun where the police sheriff's department whatever there should have been time that should have been demonstrated through the evidence to give the court something to go on now maybe it was there and they just ignored it i don't know that sometimes happened but this is a dangerous dangerous opinion that came out of the 11th circuit again came out of georgia so fortunately we have this much better case to rely on betting versus blue in the fourth circuit but these are really scary cases and i just wanted to make sure that you're aware that it's out there because i don't see where it's been in the news or anything like that in fact i just i just found out about it when i saw that my colleague chris wiest had posted about it on his facebook page and you know that's how i found out about it and read it and otherwise i hadn't seen it out there at all and you know it's unfortunate it's unfortunate and but remember this is a qualified immunity case so in the end who gets screwed by qualified immunity even though there is an insurance company 100 percent probably covering that officer covering that department during this lawsuit who gets screwed the the widow who lost her innocent husband because of qualified immunity that's when qualified immunity applies it applies in the most unjust of cases so thanks for watching um again i have the video or not the video i have the full opinion up on the website at the civil rights lawyer dot com