Whether the Ninth Circuit improperly parsed a six-second police shooting event into discrete segments and denied qualified immunity by artificially reviewing body-camera footage in slow motion

This case arises from a split-second police encounter in which an officer fired six shots in six seconds at a suspect armed with a knife who appeared to be regaining his footing to continue his advance. The Ninth Circuit, relying on slow-motion parsing of body-camera footage, deemed the first four shots constitutionally reasonable but held the last two – fired no more than one second thereafter – to constitute excessive force, despite this Court’s repeated admonitions against such artificial segmentation of fastmoving events. In doing so, the Ninth Circuit not only fractured established Fourth Amendment precedent, but also expanded its own “moment-of-threat” jurisprudence in direct conflict with this Court’s recent and unanimous rejection of that approach. Petitioners respectfully submit the following questions presented: 1. Whether the Ninth Circuit disregarded this Court’s precedents, including Graham v. Connor , 490 U.S. 386 (1989), and Plumhoff v. Rickard , 572 U.S. 765 (2014), by artificially parsing a six-second event into discrete segments, finding the first four shots reasonable, but the final two unconstitutional based on a split-second gap and slow-motion video review. An approach that also conflicts with other circuits considering similar facts. 2. Whether the Ninth Circuit effectively adopted a new and more extreme “moment-of-threat” rule that this Court unanimously rejected in Barnes v. Felix , 605 U.S. 73, 145 S. Ct. 1353 (2025). ii 3. Whether, in denying qualified immunity in a 6-5 vote, the en banc Ninth Circuit evaluated whether the right at issue was “clearly established” at an impermissibly high level of generality, contrary to this Court’s repeated warnings, including in Kisela v. Hughes , 584 U.S. 100 (2018); City & County of San Francisco v. Sheehan , 575 U.S. 600 (2015); and Ashcroft v. al-Kidd , 563 U.S. 731 (2011). 4. Whether this case presents a novel opportunity to clarify Fourth Amendment guidance that while officers should be encouraged to continue to reassess a situation, they must also be judged in light of the rapidly evolving and life-threatening circumstances they confront.