Barnes v. Felix

In April 2016, Texas law-enforcement officer Roberto Felix, Jr. (defendant) initiated a traffic stop of a car being driven by Ashtian Barnes. The stop lasted roughly two minutes. During that time, Felix asked Barnes for his license and proof of insurance, but Barnes replied that he did not have his license and that the car was a rental in someone else’s name. Felix commented that he smelled marijuana and asked Barnes whether Felix should know about anything else in the car. Barnes told Felix that Barnes might have identification in the car’s trunk. Felix told Barnes to open the trunk from the driver’s seat, and Barnes turned off the ignition and opened the trunk. At that point, Felix had his hand on his gun holster and told Barnes to exit the car. Barnes opened the door but instead of exiting the car, he turned the ignition back on and began driving forward. Felix then unholstered his gun and jumped onto the car’s doorsill. Within seconds, Felix shouted at Barnes to stop moving and then, without looking, fired two shots into the car. The shots hit and killed Barnes. Barnes’s mother (plaintiff) sued Felix under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, asserting that Felix had used excessive force in violation of Barnes’s Fourth Amendment rights. The district court granted summary judgment in Felix’s favor, finding that Mrs. Barnes had not shown that Felix’s use of force was objectively unreasonable. In examining the reasonableness of Felix’s use of deadly force, the district court applied the Fifth Circuit’s moment-of-threat rule, which examined the situation that existed at the precise moment of the threat that led to the fatal shooting. The district court said that under that test, it could not consider the initial two minutes of the traffic stop and instead had to consider only the seconds before the shooting, when Felix was on the doorsill of a moving car and reasonably could have believed that his life was in danger. The appeals court affirmed under the same moment-of-threat rule. The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari.