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State v. Mantelli1/29/2002
e has committed or is alleged to have committed. It is also apparent, through the inclusion of "probable cause" in Section 30-2-6(B), that the reasonableness of an individual police officer's actions is an objective analysis evaluated from his perspective at the time of the incident and is necessarily a factual inquiry.
We discussed extensively the use of deadly force under Section 30-2-6 in Johnson, even though Johnson itself involved New Mexico's statute on justifiable homicide by a private citizen, NMSA 1978, § 30-2-7(C) (1963). In Johnson, the defendant-a private citizen-shot and killed a man he had observed fleeing from a parking lot where a vehicle had just been burglarized. The defendant never asserted he acted in self-defense. Johnson, 1998-NMCA-019, 2. The defendant pled guilty to involuntary manslaughter reserving the right to appeal the district court's refusal to give a justifiable homicide instruction. The instruction would have permitted the jury to consider whether the death of the victim was justified if the defendant was attempting to make a citizen's arrest of a fleeing felon. Id. 3.
This Court upheld the trial judge's denial of the jury instruction on justifiable homicide on the grounds that there was no evidence the defendant could have satisfied the reasonableness standard for use of deadly force by a citizen in the apprehension of a fleeing felon. Id. 28. We noted that the "reasonableness in the use of force is generally, [but not always], a matter for the jury, id. 16, by analogizing the statute in question with Section 30-2-6, and stated that "Defendant's actions, if performed by a police officer, would never be tolerated." Id. 12. We observed that the Garner decision had wrought a change in New Mexico law on the use of deadly force, noting that the Supreme Court "required that officers have probable cause to believe that they or others are threatened with serious harm before the use of deadly force could be constitutionally reasonable under the Fourth Amendment." Johnson, 1998-NMCA-019, 8.
Similarly, in Archuleta v. LaCuesta, 1999-NMCA-113, 128 N.M. 13, 988 P.2d 883, we discussed the issue of the use of deadly force by police officers in the context of a tort action. The case involved a suit for wrongful death, brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (1994) and the State Tort Claims Act, NMSA 1978, §§ 41-4-1 to -27 (1976 as amended through 2001), by the estate of a domestic violence suspect who was shot and killed by a state police officer. Archuleta, 1999-NMCA-113, 2.
In Archuleta, this Court stated:
Whether an officer's [use of deadly force] was reasonable is heavily fact dependent. The reasonableness of the use of deadly force in any particular situation is an objective test from the perspective of the officer on the scene, with the understanding that officers must often make split-second decisions in difficult situations about what force is necessary. Id. 8 (citations omitted).
We held that the "reasonableness" of the force used in the case involved a factual dispute "surrounding the circumstances immediately connected to the shooting which includes passing on the credibility of witnesses," and should therefore be decided by the jury. Id. 14.
The Johnson Court's discussion of Section 30-2-6, despite being dicta, and the Archuleta Court's announcements on the use of deadly force provide a framework to evaluate the issue presented in this case.
E. Discussion
The crux of this issue is whether a jury could find that Defendant had probable cause to believe Montoya posed a threat of serious harm or deadly force to him or Sgt. Marquez, and that the use of
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