Manis v. Lawson

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• holding that an officer was entitled to qualified immunity where facts established that he reasonably perceived a threat from a non-compliant suspect refusing to show his hands and appearing to retrieve a gun
• explaining that “Appellees do not dispute the only fact material to whether [the officer] was justified in using deadly force” (emphasis added)
• finding that an officer’s shooting an intoxicated driver who repeatedly reached underneath the front seat of his car despite being ordered to show his hands was not an excessive use of force, even though the driver turned out to be unarmed
• finding no constitutional violation where victim ignored repeated police commands, “reached under the seat of his vehicle and then moved as if he had obtained the object he sought”
• finding use of deadly force reasonable where the plaintiff had “reached under the seat of his vehicle and then moved as if he had obtained the object he sought” and had done so “in defiance of the officers’ commands”
• Manis’s act of reaching under the seat of the vehicle in what looked like a grab for a weapon was the “act” that justified the use of deadly force.

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).