Federal Court Says Qualified Immunity Can’t Shield Cop Who Tased Suicidal Man Soaked In Gasoline

If this sounds familiar, sadly, it is.

Three years ago, the Fifth Circuit Appeals Court somehow arrived at the conclusion that tasing someone soaked in gasoline — an act of escalation that not only killed the suicidal person officers were supposed to rescuing but also burned the entire residence to the ground — was not excessive force. It was supposedly justified by the gasoline-soaked man’s threats that he would burn himself and the house down if officers kept advancing on him.

Robbing him of his life and his remaining autonomy, Arlington, Texas police officer Officer Guadrama discharged his Taser and made the man’s threats a reality. And it was still just considered to be the sort of thing cops should be doing by the Fifth Circuit court.

It went the other way here. In a California court, a federal judge has arrived at the opposite conclusion in a nearly identical incident. (via Courthouse News Service)

In this case, Paul Hall was despondent because his family refused to interact with him, apparently “fed up with him” for reasons that go unexplained. Feeling abandoned, Hall soaked himself in gasoline, sat on the floor in the middle of the house, and threatened to light himself on fire.

Officer John Gale of the Weed, California police department responded to the call. His actions, as well as those of Paul Hall, were captured by the officer’s body camera. To his credit, Officer Gale at least made some effort to defuse the situation by talking to Hall, who repeatedly reminded him he was covered in gasoline and ready to take his own life by igniting the lighter he held in one of his hands.

When that didn’t work, Gale tried to take the lighter by force by attempting to wrestle it out of Hall’s hands. When that didn’t work, Gale went back to his first tactic: yelling repeatedly for Hall to drop the lighter. This tactic didn’t work the first few dozen times, but according to the footage, Gale did this same thing more than 50 times, perhaps expecting he was due for a win.

Right before he set Hall on fire with his Taser, Officer Gale again ordered Hall to “drop the lighter” and to “put it down.” And right before his fired at Hall, Hall dropped his hands to his sides, possibly on his way to complying. But he never got a chance. That’s when Gale fired and that’s when Hall caught on fire.

Gale first insisted this wasn’t excessive force. The court says in some cases, these actions might not have been. But in this case, at best, that’s still an open question. And the reason it’s still a set of disputed facts is because the officer’s own body cam footage (arguably) contradicts his assertions. From the decision [PDF]:

Defendant Gale’s repeated assertion that Plaintiff Hall “appeared to be flicking the lighter to start” at the time Defendant Gale shot his taser is disputed by Plaintiff and arguably contradicted by the body camera footage […] Upon review of the body camera footage, it is not undisputedly apparent to the Court that Plaintiff Hall appeared to be flicking the lighter to start. Thus, a reasonable jury could conclude, during his interactions with Defendant Gale, Plaintiff Hall did not attempt to ignite the lighter such that he posed an immediate threat that warranted intermediate force.

Then there’s the fact it appears Hall was finally attempting to comply with Gale’s demands moments before Gale decided to deploy his Taser.

Second, Plaintiff Hall alleges he complied with Defendant Gale’s commands to put down the lighter by moving his hands down by his side, including the one holding the lighter. The body camera footage confirms, shortly before Defendant Gale tased Plaintiff Hall, Plaintiff Hall had dropped both hands, including the one holding the lighter. The body camera footage also shows Defendant Gale shot Plaintiff Hall with the taser after Plaintiff Hall had dropped both of his hands. A reasonable jury could conclude any threat related to the lighter dissipated the moment Plaintiff Hall put his hands down.

That’s strike two. Strike three is the undeniable fact Hall wasn’t threatening anyone other than himself. And there’s plenty of evidence on the record that Officer Gale couldn’t have reasonably believed he was a threat to others because the officer made no attempt to remove other people from the house, didn’t even bother to bring in the fire extinguisher he had in his squad car, or hold off on taking any action until the fire department arrived. If he really thought he needed to save others from the immediate threat of a fire, he would have taken those actions. In the end, he was the one to ignite the fire that threatened others, all while claiming this was the only way to prevent the man he set on fire from harming other people.

And here’s where the decision referenced in the opening of this post comes into play. Completely ridiculously, Officer Gale cited that decision in support of his qualified immunity request despite (1) the case was handled by a different circuit, (2) the decision issued by the Fifth was non-precedential, and (most importantly) (3) had been issued two years after he set Paul Hall on fire. As any plaintiff knows and every cop defendant should know, you can’t cite something as precedent when it happens after the incidents in dispute. The clue is in the goddamn word, which requires something to precede something else to be relevant, not arrive after the fact.

Immunity is denied because even if the court were inclined to treat a non-binding decision issued two years after Officer Gale set Paul Hall on fire with his taser, the facts of the cases are different enough Officer Gale couldn’t reasonably believe non-binding non-precedent put him in the clear for deciding setting someone on fire for the crime of threatening to set themselves on fire was justified.

It’s bad enough the body cam footage contradicted the officer’s claims. It’s even worse that his lawyer thought he could get some QI for his client by time-traveling to the future (so to speak) to find cases supporting his client’s actions.