Billy D. Stair, III v. Charles Jackson

During a detention, respondent Charles Jackson attempted to strike an officer who was handcuffing him, causing petitioner Billy D. Stair to deploy a Taser, activating it three times in nineteen seconds before Jackson ceased resistance. The district court granted summary judgment to petitioner, finding the force reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. The Eighth Circuit reversed, 2-1. The majority held that while the first and third activations were reasonable as a matter of law, a jury could find the second to be excessive. The dissent agreed with the district court judge, that all three activations were reasonable, noting that Jackson’s “momentarily supine position on the ground was hardly a guarantee of a no-longer aggressive subject. . . .” The questions presented by this petition are:

1. Did the Eighth Circuit depart from this Court’s decisions in Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386 (1989) and Plumhoff v. Rickard, 572 U.S. 765 (2014) in denying qualified immunity to petitioner based upon the absence of a constitutional violation by assessing the reasonableness of each of three Taser activations over a nineteen second period, instead of assessing the reasonableness of petitioner’s conduct in light of the totality of the circumstances?

2. Did the Eighth Circuit depart from this Court’s decision in Kisela v. Hughes, ___ U.S. ___, 138 S. Ct. 1148 (2018) (per curiam) and numerous other cases by denying qualified