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Richardson v. McGriff11/15/2000
ed the need to use force, (2) they should have responded in a different manner, such as waiting for a SWAT team, and (3) they should have used a lesser degree of force. The trial court excluded the evidence, as the court did in this case, on the ground that it was irrelevant to whether any seizure of the plaintiff was unreasonable, and the appellate court found no error. As to the evidence questioning whether the officers had, themselves, created the need for deadly force, the court, quoting from Graham, made clear that reasonableness must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with 20/20 hindsight. The Graham Court's use of language such as "at the moment" and "split-second judgment" were "strong indicia that the reasonableness inquiry extends only to those facts known to the officer at the precise moment the officers effectuate the seizure." Schulz, supra, 44 F.3d at 648. Similarly, responding to the complaint that the officers should have proceeded differently and used lesser force, the court noted that the Fourth Amendment "does not allow this type of `Monday morning quarterback' approach because it only requires that the seizure fall within a range of objective reasonableness." Id. at 649. The court held:
"The Fourth Amendment inquiry focuses not on what the most prudent course of action may have been or whether there were other alternatives available, but instead whether the seizure actually effectuated falls within a range of conduct which is objectively `reasonable' under the Fourth Amendment. Alternative measures which 20/20 hindsight reveal to be less intrusive (or more prudent), such as waiting for a supervisor or the SWAT team, are simply not relevant to the reasonableness inquiry." Id.
The U.S. Courts of Appeal for the Second, Fourth, Sixth, Seventh, Ninth, and Tenth Circuits have reached similar conclusions, as have appellate courts in South Dakota and Washington. In Greenidge v. Ruffin, 927 F.2d 789 (4th Cir. 1991), a police officer working on the vice squad observed a woman believed by her to be a prostitute enter a car and, on further surveillance, witnessed an unlawful sex act being committed in the car. The officer opened the car door, identified herself, and ordered the passengers to place their hands in view. When neither complied, she drew her weapon and repeated the order. At that point, the male passenger reached behind the seat for a long cylindrical object, which the officer believed to be a shotgun, and she shot the man. The object was, in fact, a wooden nightstick. The passenger sued under ยง 1983, and, on appeal from an unfavorable judgment, complained about the exclusion of evidence that the officer's failure to employ back-up and to use a flashlight violated police procedure. As here, he urged that the excluded evidence was probative of the reasonableness inquiry as it showed that the officer recklessly created the dangerous situation.
The Fourth Circuit court read Graham as contradicting the plaintiff's claim that, in determining reasonableness, "the chain of events ought to be traced backward to the officer's misconduct of failing to comply with the standard police procedures for night-time prostitution arrests," concluding instead that "events which occurred before Officer Ruffin opened the car door and identified herself to the passengers are not probative of the reasonableness of Ruffin's decision to fire the shot," that those events "are not relevant and are inadmissible." Id. at 792. The court adopted the then-existing view of the Seventh Circuit court that liability under an objective reasonableness standard must be determined exclusively upon an examination and weighing of the information that the officer p
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