Casey Benton v. Mary Bradley, as Administrator of the Estate of Troy Robinson, et al.

The issue in this case is whether a police officer who deployed a taser to stop a fleeing person on top of an eight-foot wall is entitled to qualified immunity. The fleeing person, who the officer had reason to believe might have a weapon and who was about to escape into a residential community, died when he fell off the wall. Relying on Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1 (1985), which held that a police officer violated the Fourth Amendment when he shot in the head a person he was “reasonably sure” was not armed, the Eleventh Circuit held that the officer was not entitled to qualified immunity because, under clearly established law, the officer unlawfully used deadly force by deploying the taser. In the alternative, the Eleventh Circuit held that, even disregarding Garner, qualified immunity was unavailable because the use of the taser was obviously unlawful. The questions presented are:

1. Did the Eleventh Circuit define clearly established law at too high a level of generality in assessing whether any reasonable officer would have known that deploying the taser constituted use of excessive force?

2. Did the Eleventh Circuit err in holding that under clearly established law any reasonable officer would have known that deploying the taser constituted use of excessive force?