Ferris v. Scism

Issues: (1) Whether the Fourth Amendment requires a police officer to wait until an armed suspect points the barrel of his handgun in the officer’s direction before the officer can deploy lethal force to protect himself and innocents in the area; (2) whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit erred in denying Detective Brett Ferris qualified immunity without even identifying what material facts defined the immunity questions; (3) whether the 2nd Circuit erred in deferring the qualified immunity questions to the “post-verdict” stage of the trial so that immunity would only be addressed in the event a jury issued a verdict against Ferris; and (4) whether the 2nd Circuit’s decision below disregarded the Supreme Court’s repeated holdings that qualified immunity is immunity from suit, not merely immunity from judgment, when it declined to define or decide the immunity questions despite a robust record containing undisputed facts.