Ashtian Barnes was driving his girlfriend’s rental car when he was pulled over by a police officer for toll violations that a previous renter had acquired. When the officer instructed Ashtian to exit the vehicle, the car moved slowly for two seconds. In that moment, the officer jumped onto the car’s door sill and shot Asthian at close range, hitting him twice. The officer continued to Ashtian at gunpoint while he bled to death.

Ashtian’s mother sued the Officer for violating the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable use of force by police. But the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed her claim, holding that the officer’s behavior was reasonable when viewed at the two-second “moment of the threat” in which the officer jumped on a moving car. In doing so, the Fifth Circuit diverged from the majority of the U.S. Courts of Appeals, which analyze whether police use of force is reasonable under the “totality of the circumstances,” following the Supreme Court’s instructions in Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386 (1989).

In 2024, U.S. police killed more people than any year on record. Reasoned decision-making in individual civil rights lawsuits plays an important role in determining why this is, giving policymakers evidence to use when determining how best to balance safeguards against wrongful killings with the realities of on-the-ground policing. If courts limit inquires to the moment of the threat alone, the public is deprived of important facts and contexts at the heart of an accurate determination of whether police use of deadly force is reasonable.

Why is This a Key Case?

RFK Human Rights and partners, representing the Southern Borders Communities Coalition as amici, filed a brief urging the Supreme Court to reject the moment of the threat doctrine as inconsistent with with international human rights legal standards that require police use of deadly force to be both necessary to stop a lethal threat and proportionate to the threat in question.

Our brief asks the Supreme Court to honor the United States’ international human rights law commitments and supports a mother seeking justice for her son, the victim of unnecessary and disproportionate police violence, killed over the simple act of driving a rental car with outstanding toll violations incurred by another driver.

Nov. 20, 2024

Amicus brief filed

RFK Human Rights filed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court urging adoption of international human rights requirements of proportionality and necessity in police use of force.