Charlotte Appealing Ruling That Rejected Qualified Immunity Request; Judge Worried About Creating Legal ‘Kill Zones’ for Cops

Today, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals is
hearing arguments from the city government of Charlotte, North
Carolina, which is looking for “qualified immunity” for Matthew
Wilson, an officer of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department
(CMPD). In 2010, Wilson shot knife-wielding 15-year-old Jeffrey
Green from more than thirty feet away while looking for Green’s
mother’s boyfriend, who had allegedly stabbed her. Green was not at
his mother’s house when she was stabbed, as the Lake Wylie
Pilot
explains:

Jeffrey Green heard about his mother’s stabbing from a
friend and had hurried to the house. There, he picked up a kitchen
knife. He then walked down the street looking for his mother,
cursing and shouting as he went.

The officer and the son soon met. Wilson pulled his weapon and
ordered the teen to stop and drop his knife; he testified that he
had not heard police reports that the stabbing suspect had already
left the area. He also said he did not hear [Green’s mother,
Valinda] Streater’s screams not to shoot her son, though another
officer on hand testified that he did.

Wilson also said he did not see Green drop his knife. Police
estimate that the teen was almost 32 feet away when Wilson fired
twice. After a pause, he fired two more shots. Wilson later said he
believed that Green posed an immediate threat to him and the people
nearby.

Green survived the shooting, and a police investigation found
nothing wrong with the incident. Wilson remains on the force.
Green’s mother, meanwhile, sued police for alleged negligence,
violation of her son’s constitutional rights, and other charges.
The case was tried in district court and ended in a hung jury that
leaned 5-3 in favor of the officer. A second trial was supposed to
start last year, but attorneys for the officer then asked the judge
from the first trial, Max Cogburn, to grant Wilson qualified
immunity. He did not, quite forcefully, via the Pilot:

Cogburn, using blunt language during oral arguments,
refused. He said the decision on whether the officer’s use of
lethal force was justified should be decided by a jury, not a
judge.

Moreover, Cogburn said he feared that giving Wilson immunity risked
setting up a legally protected “kill zone” for CMPD officers.

“It’s whether or not police officers have the absolute right, under
these circumstances, to shoot,” Cogburn said in August. “And I can
tell you, gentlemen, that’s not something that anybody wants in
this town or this country, to say that if a fellow has a knife and
he’s 30-something feet away, gun him down, because you have
qualified immunity given to you by the courts.”

Wilson’s attorneys argue he only had “mere moments over whether
to shoot a non-compliant individual, holding a knife, verbalizing
aggression while approaching a stabbing victim” and that Green did
not have the right “to not have deadly force used upon
him in those circumstances.”

Earlier this year, a grand jury
indicted another police officer from Charlotte, Randall
Kerrick, who shot an unarmed 24-year-old motorist apparently
seeking help after a car crash. The Supreme Court, meanwhile, is
deciding a case that could extend the reach of qualified immunity
for police officers, Plumhoff v. Rickard, which Damon Root
wrote about
earlier this month.