Iwoinakee Gebray Harris-Billups v. Milele Anderson

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[PUBLISH]
In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Eleventh Circuit
____________________
No. 22-10033
____________________
IWOINAKEE GEBRAY HARRIS-BILLUPS,
Surviving Children of Decedent on behalf of
Quamere Jadon Harris
on behalf of Quamillieon Jaden Daniel
as administrator of the estate of Quintas Deshun Harris,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
versus
MILELE ANDERSON,
Defendant-Appellee.
____________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of Georgia
D.C. Docket No. 1:19-cv-03984-SCJ
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____________________
Before NEWSOM, LUCK, and TJOFLAT, Circuit Judges.
NEWSOM, Circuit Judge:
This is a tragic case, from beginning to end. It’s tragic for
Quintas Deshun Harris, a Navy veteran who, having fired on
several police officers who sought to question him, was then killed
in a hail of 58 bullets. It’s tragic for Mr. Harris’s grieving family—
his mother and two children, who lost a son and father. And it’s
tragic for Milele Anderson—the officer who discharged the fatal
shot and who now lives with the memories of Mr. Harris holding
a gun to her head, the images of him shooting at one of her
colleagues, and the reality that she took a life.
Out of the tragedy arises a legal issue that requires our
decision: When Officer Anderson fired the bullet that killed Mr.
Harris, did she effect an “unreasonable . . . seizure[]” within the
meaning of the Fourth Amendment? We hold that she did not.
Having reviewed the record—and, most importantly, having
repeatedly reviewed the bodycam footage of the incident—we
hold, to the contrary, that she acted reasonably. In the moments
leading up to Officer Anderson’s decision to take the final shot, Mr.
Harris had accosted her and held a gun to her head, separately
pointed his gun at her and her colleagues, barricaded himself in his
car, and exchanged fire with the officers. Finally, in (literally) the
split second before Officer Anderson pulled the trigger for the last
time, Mr. Harris, who had been hit four times and had fallen to the
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pavement, lurched violently. Particularly given all that had
preceded it, a prudent officer witnessing Mr. Harris’s lurch could
well have thought that he was gearing up for yet another attack.
In those circumstances, it was reasonable—and thus lawful—for
Officer Anderson to shoot when she did. The Constitution didn’t
require her to wait.
I
If a picture is worth a thousand words, the video footage of
the incident underlying this case is worth ten thousand. Officer
Anderson’s chest-mounted camera captured the moments that
immediately preceded the shot that killed Mr. Harris. And we’ll
get there soon enough. First, though, we recount the events that
occurred before Officer Anderson activated her bodycam.
Around midnight on August 2, 2017, Officer Anderson
pulled into an apartment complex in DeKalb County, Georgia,
responding to a noise complaint. Almost immediately, Mr.
Harris—who was suffering psychosis and stammering about
“death or dying”—accosted Officer Anderson and put a gun to her
head. Officer Anderson drew her sidearm and Mr. Harris backed
off—only to point his gun at her partner.
Weapons drawn all around, a standoff ensued. The officers
ordered Mr. Harris to drop his gun. But he kept it trained on them
and a third officer who had arrived to provide backup. Mr. Harris
warned that he would kill them all—and he even put the gun to his
own head, threatening to kill himself. Several tense moments
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passed as the officers repeatedly implored Mr. Harris to stand
down. Their pleas went unheeded.
Still armed, Mr. Harris got into his parked car. As he did, a
gun fell to the ground. Thinking that Mr. Harris was then
unarmed, one of the officers holstered his weapon and announced
that Harris had dropped his gun. But the peace was false: Mr.
Harris promptly drew a second gun, and the standoff resumed.
It was at this point that Officer Anderson activated her
bodycam. The footage it captured is key to this case and is
accessible here. See Video, Doc. 23-4
(https://www.ca11.uscourts.gov/media-sources). Readers would
do well to stop and watch it. Here, in brief, is what it shows:
0:00–1:10. As the camera begins to roll, Officer Anderson
narrates, clearly on edge: “Ass should have been fuckin’ shot,” she
snaps. Id. at 0:06–0:21. She and her partners sternly—and
repeatedly—order Mr. Harris to “put the weapon down!” Id.
Officer Anderson repositions herself to avoid crossfire and instructs
the others to do likewise: “Watch the crossfire!” she commands.
Id. at 0:45; see also id. at 0:26–0:38. She moves in front of Mr.
Harris’s car, eyeing him through the windshield.
1:11–1:20. The dam breaks. At the 1:11 mark, Mr. Harris
opens fire on the officers. They respond relentlessly, unleashing a
five-second barrage of 54 bullets. Id. at 1:12–1:17. Mr. Harris
emerges from the car, and Officer Anderson fires three more times.
Id. at 1:17–1:20. (Of these 57 bullets, four hit Mr. Harris—one each
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in his abs, back, forearm, and calf.) Mr. Harris falls to the
pavement.
1:21–1:24. At this point, Mr. Harris appears to have been
disarmed—his first gun remains where he dropped it, several feet
from where he lies, and the second is just next to it. See id. at 1:39. 1
Even so, the situation remains extremely volatile. One officer cries
out that he’s been “shot in the hand, shot in the hand!” Id. at 1:21–
1:24. (The bullet fragment, as it turns out, was from his own
weapon.) Officer Anderson keeps her gun trained on Mr. Harris,
who is writhing on the pavement, in the fetal position, atop shards
of glass. Id. at 1:20–1:24.
This case turns on what happens during the next second.
1:25–1:26. At the 1:25 mark, Harris lurches—violently. Id.
at 1:25. His legs kick outward, his chest jumps off the ground, and
his arms swing down to his torso. 2 Immediately, Officer Anderson
takes one more shot. Id. This bullet, the 58th fired at Mr. Harris,
kills him.
II
Acting as his estate’s administrator and on behalf of his two
sons, Mr. Harris’s mother, Ms. Iwoinakee Harris-Billups, filed suit
1 This freeze-frame image comes from the moment just after the 58th and final
shot, but depicts the guns’ locations.
2 The lurch lasts only a split second. To see it more clearly, viewers should
reduce the video’s speed and turn up their screen’s brightness.
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against Officer Anderson. Ms. Harris-Billups principally sought
damages under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, 3 alleging that Officer Anderson
had used constitutionally excessive force—and had thereby
“unreasonabl[y] . . . seiz[ed]” Mr. Harris in violation of the Fourth
Amendment—when she fired the 58th and fatal bullet. She also
appended two Georgia-law claims: one for assault and battery, see
Ga. Code Ann. §§ 51-1-13, 51-1-14 (West 2022), and another for
wrongful death, see id. § 51-4-2.
Officer Anderson moved for summary judgment. She
argued that qualified immunity shielded her from suit on the § 1983
claim and that official immunity protected her from the state-law
claims.
The district court granted Officer Anderson’s motion. It first
agreed that qualified immunity knocked out Ms. Harris-Billups’s §
1983 claim. In particular, it held that Officer Anderson’s “split-
second” decision to fire the fatal bullet didn’t violate the Fourth
Amendment: It was “objectively reasonable,” the court concluded,
“for [Officer Anderson] to believe that [Mr. Harris] still posed a
threat at the time of the final shot.” Because that holding alone
warranted granting Officer Anderson summary judgment, the
3In relevant part: “Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance,
regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of
Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States
or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights,
privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable
to the party injured in an action at law . . . .” 42 U.S.C. § 1983.
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court found no need to assess the second prong of the qualified-
immunity analysis: whether Officer Anderson’s actions had
violated “clearly established” law.
Having rejected Ms. Harris-Billups’s federal constitutional
claim, the district court refused to consider her state-law claims.
For support, the court cited 28 U.S.C. § 1367(c), which permits a
district court to “decline to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over
a claim” if it has “dismissed all claims over which it has original
jurisdiction.” 28 U.S.C. § 1367(c)(3).
This is Ms. Harris-Billups’s appeal. 4
III
A government official exercising discretionary authority—as
all agree Officer Anderson was—is entitled to qualified immunity
on a plaintiff’s § 1983 claim unless (1) she “violated one or more
constitutional rights” and (2) “it was clearly established at the time
that [her] specific actions did so.” Powell v. Snook, 25 F.4th 912,
920 (11th Cir. 2022). Like the district court, we conclude that this
case can be decided at the first step of the qualified-immunity
analysis. For reasons we will explain, we hold that Officer
4We review de novo whether the district court was correct to award Officer
Anderson qualified immunity, see Dukes v. Deaton, 852 F.3d 1035, 1041 (11th
Cir. 2017), and we review for abuse of discretion the court’s decision to decline
supplemental jurisdiction, see Raney v. Allstate Ins., 370 F.3d 1086, 1088–89
(11th Cir. 2004).
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Anderson did not violate the Fourth Amendment when she shot
and killed Mr. Harris.
A
The Fourth Amendment forbids law-enforcement officers
from making “unreasonable . . . seizures.” U.S. Const. amend. IV.
“[T]here can be no question that apprehension [of a suspect] by the
use of deadly force is a seizure . . . .” Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S.
1, 7 (1985). So Officer Anderson’s conduct here—shooting and
killing Mr. Harris—is “subject to the reasonableness requirement
of the Fourth Amendment.” Id.In many cases, a claim that a seizure was unreasonable
would force us to “slosh our way through the factbound morass
of” the “reasonableness” analysis. Scott v. Harris, 550 U.S. 372, 383
(2007). Here, though, a bright(ish) line emerges: “[A]n officer may
use deadly force when [s]he ‘has probable cause to believe that the
suspect poses a threat of serious physical harm, either to the officer
or to others’ . . . . ” Powell, 25 F.4th at 922 (internal punctuation
omitted) (quoting Vaughan v. Cox, 343 F.3d 1323, 1329–30 (11th
Cir. 2003)). Probable cause, in turn, exists when the “facts and
circumstances [are] sufficient to warrant a prudent” officer in
reaching that conclusion. Black v. Wigington, 811 F.3d 1259, 1267
(11th Cir. 2016) (defining “probable cause”). And to be clear, the
inquiry is an objective one—the question isn’t whether Officer
Anderson herself actually believed that the circumstances justified
the use of deadly force, but rather whether a reasonable officer in
her position could have so concluded. See Graham v. Connor, 490
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U.S. 386, 397 (1989). “Probable cause,” the Supreme Court has
emphasized, “is not a high bar.” District of Columbia v. Wesby,
138 S. Ct. 577, 586 (2018).
Several important facts would have justified a reasonable
officer in believing that Mr. Harris posed a lethal threat at the time
Officer Anderson fired the fatal shot. First, Mr. Harris had access
to at least two guns. True, they weren’t within his immediate
reach, but they weren’t far beyond it. See Video at 1:39. With a
quick lunge, he probably could have reached them. And
remember, just minutes earlier, Mr. Harris, having dropped one
gun, had surprised the officers with a second. Accordingly, Officer
Anderson could reasonably have feared that he had yet another
gun at the ready. In any event, Mr. Harris’s access to deadly
weapons supports a reasonable conclusion that he posed a deadly
threat. Cf. Davis v. Waller, 44 F.4th 1305, 1314 (11th Cir. 2022)
(“[W]e have consistently said that it is reasonable for an officer to
believe that a suspect poses an ‘immediate risk of serious harm to
[him]’ when the suspect is armed.”); Powell, 25 F.4th at 922
(“[W]hen a suspect’s gun is available for ready use—even when the
suspect has not drawn his gun—an officer is not required to wait
and hope for the best.”) (internal quotations omitted).
Second, Mr. Harris had proven his willingness to use those
guns against the officers. By the time Officer Anderson fired the
final shot, Mr. Harris had (1) held a gun to Officer Anderson’s head,
(2) pointed a gun at other officers, (3) ignored the officers’ repeated
orders to “put the weapon down,” and, finally, (4) engaged in an
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active firefight. Lest there be any doubt, anyone who uses or
threatens to use a deadly weapon in the way that Mr. Harris did
“poses a threat of serious physical harm.” Powell, 25 F.4th at 922;
see also Davis, 44 F.4th at 1314 (canvassing decisions authorizing
police officers’ use of deadly force against drivers who use or
threaten to use their cars as weapons).
Third, Mr. Harris was acting erratically and displaying a
frighteningly “unstable frame of mind.” Long v. Slaton, 508 F.3d
576, 581–82 (11th Cir. 2007) (confirming that a suspect’s “unstable
frame of mind” can support probable cause to use deadly force).
Not only had he committed dangerous “criminal act[s],” he had
also “energetic[ally] eva[ded]” the officers by barricading himself in
his car and ignoring more than a dozen orders to surrender. Id.Against that backdrop, a reasonable officer could certainly
have interpreted Mr. Harris’s sudden lurch as the commencement
of yet another attack. As we have explained—and as the bodycam
video confirms—Mr. Harris’s lurch was not the staggering, slow-
to-get-up tossing of a dazed or injured athlete. It was the jolt of one
jarred awake or springing into sudden, urgent action. In the blink
of an eye, Mr. Harris’s upper body rose off the ground, his legs
kicked, and his arms swooped down toward his torso. Could he
have been working up the momentum to stand or slide toward one
of the guns on the ground? Might he have been reaching for a third
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gun in his pants? Or was he instead just writhing in pain? 5 We can’t
be sure what Mr. Harris was doing. And that is precisely the point:
“[A]n officer is not required to wait until an armed and dangerous
felon has drawn a bead on [her] or others before using deadly
force.” Montoute v. Carr, 114 F.3d 181, 185 (11th Cir. 1997); cf.
also Long, 508 F.3d at 581–82 (upholding as reasonable an officer’s
use of deadly force against a mentally unstable individual who had
stolen a police cruiser, even though he hadn’t yet driven it
dangerously); Mullenix v. Luna, 577 U.S. 7, 17–18 (2015) (endorsing
Long).
* * *
Bottom line: Officer Anderson was facing down a man who
had been threatening to kill her for several minutes straight. He
had held a gun to her head, separately pointed his gun at her and
her partners, spurned repeated orders to drop his weapons and
surrender, barricaded himself in his car, and, finally, opened fire.
This man knew how to conceal guns; he was suicidal, dogged, and
erratic; and he had shown no signs of backing down. And with the
5 Ms. Harris-Billups insists that, viewing the evidence in the light most
favorable to her and drawing all reasonable inferences in her favor—as we
must on summary judgment—we have to assume that Mr. Harris’s lurch was
“due to the pain that he [wa]s experiencing.” Br. of Appellant at 21. The point,
though, as explained in text, is that the actual reason for Mr. Harris’s lurch—
whether he meant to fight, stand up, or grab a gun, or was instead just
experiencing pain—doesn’t control our analysis; rather, what matters is that a
reasonable officer couldn’t have excluded any of these possibilities, and thus
could have viewed Mr. Harris’s lurch as threatening.
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lurch, he seemed to be springing back into action. We have little
trouble concluding that, in those circumstances, Officer Anderson
could reasonably have believed that he posed a lethal threat. Her
decision to neutralize that threat was “[ ]reasonable” and therefore
constitutional.
B
Ms. Harris-Billups raises several counterarguments. With
respect, none persuades us.
First, Ms. Harris-Billups asserts that a comparison of two
freeze-frame photos from the beginning and end of Mr. Harris’s
lurch proves that the movement couldn’t “reasonably be construed
as potentially threatening,” Br. of Appellant at 28—because, she
says, the two stills “show[ ] that Mr. Harris’s only movement at this
time was going from laying on his right shoulder and right leg with
his legs curled and left leg bent in the air and hands to his head to a
new position in which his right shoulder remained on the ground,
his right leg remained on the ground, his head became raised and
his arms were curled with his hands near his abdominal area,” id.
at 8. But policing doesn’t occur in freeze-frames. It’s not just the
positioning of Mr. Harris’s body parts that would have justified a
reasonable officer in thinking his lurch threatening, but also the
suddenness with which he began to shift from a prone,
unmenacing posture to a potentially violent one. The video
captures that suddenness in a way the freeze-frame images miss.
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Second, Ms. Harris-Billups asserts that Officer Anderson’s
failure to take cover between the initial 57-bullet blast and Mr.
Harris’s lurch proves that she no longer viewed him as a threat.
We disagree for two reasons. As an initial matter, Officer
Anderson’s private, subjective thoughts are irrelevant. The
“reasonableness inquiry in an excessive force case is an objective
one” that doesn’t turn on an individual officer’s “underlying intent
or motivation.” Graham, 490 U.S. at 397 (internal quotation
omitted). 6 Moreover, and in any event, the fact that Officer
Anderson felt comfortable not taking cover before Mr. Harris
suddenly lurched says little about how she (or a reasonable officer)
would have felt after he did so. A reasonable officer could very well
have thought that the lurch fundamentally altered the complexion
of the situation.
Third, Ms. Harris-Billups asserts (quoting her expert) that
Officer Anderson had no cause to shoot Mr. Harris because she had
plenty of “time to fully assess the fact that the threat was alleviated
and Mr. Harris was ‘defeated by gunfire, had no weapon in his
hand, [was] wounded and laying huddled on the ground.’” Br. of
Appellant at 30 (quoting Doc. 26-4 at 9). That was all true—right
up until it wasn’t. Indeed, Officer Anderson presumably did
6 That settled legal principle likewise defeats Ms. Harris-Billups’s accusation
that Officer Anderson “offered an excuse” for shooting Mr. Harris “that is not
supported by the facts.” Br. of Appellant at 31–32. Again, all that matters—at
least for Fourth Amendment purposes—is that a reasonable officer in Officer
Anderson’s shoes could have believed that the use of deadly force was
justified.
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conclude that Mr. Harris wasn’t dangerous when he was “lying
huddled on the ground.” And that likely explains why she didn’t
shoot him while he was lying huddled on the ground. In any event,
we needn’t address whether Officer Anderson would have been
justified in firing once more had Mr. Harris not suddenly lurched.
Because he did. And that lurch changed things. At the very least,
having witnessed Mr. Harris lurch, a reasonable officer could have
concluded that he was once again on the move, and once again
posed a threat.
Fourth, Ms. Harris-Billups emphasizes that Officer
Anderson was the only officer who shot Mr. Harris when he
lurched; that fact, she says, shows “that Mr. Harris was no longer a
threat.” Id. At most, though, this suggests that Officer Anderson’s
colleagues didn’t themselves believe that Mr. Harris posed a threat.
But even indulging that assumption, those officers’ subjective
opinions wouldn’t render a third officer’s contrary judgment—
especially one formed in (literally) a split second—disqualifyingly
unreasonable. See Davis, 44 F.4th at 1318 (observing that “other
officers’ decision not to shoot does not render [the defendant
officer’s] choice [to shoot] unreasonable” because “[m]ore than one
course of action can be reasonable”). 7
7 In any event, as this Court recently explained in another case, the assumption
that underlies Ms. Harris-Billups’s contention is dubious. Just because other
officers held their fire doesn’t mean they thought Mr. Harris was benign. One
of them had been shot in the hand and might have been unable to discharge
his weapon. And another was on the other side of Mr. Harris’s car and might
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Finally, Ms. Harris-Billups contends that Officer Anderson is
just like the policeman to whom we denied qualified immunity in
Hunter v. City of Leeds, 941 F.3d 1265 (11th Cir. 2019). We
disagree. The officer there had fired “seven additional shots against
a suspect who . . . had dropped his weapon” in compliance with
police directives “and was apparently no longer resisting.” Id. at
1280. That’s not this case. Officer Anderson wasn’t contending
with a defenseless man who had surrendered. She was up against
a man who (or so a reasonable officer could have concluded) bore
the means, and the ability, and the demonstrated intent to shoot
her, a man who was acting erratically and violently, and who had
shown no sign of giving up. Quite unlike the suspect in Hunter,
Mr. Harris posed a real and immediate threat of grave harm.
* * *
For all these reasons, we hold that in firing the shot that
tragically killed Mr. Harris, Officer Anderson did not violate the
Fourth Amendment. Accordingly, she is entitled to qualified
immunity on Ms. Harris-Billups’s § 1983 claim.
V
Once it had dismissed the § 1983 claim—the sole claim over
which it had original jurisdiction—the district court was well
not have seen the lurch. See Davis, 44 F.4th at 1318 (noting that “other
officers’ decision not to shoot” is “especially” weak evidence that it was
unreasonable to shoot if the various officers are in “dissimilar positions . . . on
the scene”).
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within its discretion to decline to exercise supplemental jurisdiction
over Ms. Harris-Billups’s state-law claims. Indeed, a federal statute
authorizes district courts to do just that. See 28 U.S.C. § 1367(c)(3).
And we have gone even further, “encourag[ing]” district courts to
“dismiss any remaining state claims when, as here, the federal
claims have been dismissed prior to trial.” Raney, 370 F.3d at 1088–
89. A district court doesn’t abuse its discretion by heeding our
advice.
AFFIRMED.