On June 3, 2025, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals decided Benton v. Layton[i], which serves as an excellent review of the law related to the use of deadly force under the Fourth Amendment. The relevant facts of Benton, taken directly from the case, are as follows:
At 4:35 a.m. on January 9, 2021, Defendants were in a marked police vehicle in a highway median, with Layton in the driver’s seat. Hill passed Defendants on the highway, Dashcam at 1:42,1 and Layton U-turned from their position and drove up the three-lane highway. Bone confirmed with Layton that they were moving at 96 miles per hour. Id. at 2:07. At around Dashcam 2:37, Defendants caught up with Hill, and at Dashcam 2:51, Defendants again confirmed they were moving at a high rate of speed. See id. (Layton saying “[w]e’re going 96 right now, 94”). Layton noted a few seconds later that “[Hill] is swerving,” and it is clear on the dashcam that Hill, generally situated in the middle lane, was veering into and out of neighboring lanes. Id. at 2:56. At Dashcam 3:23, Defendants sped up to get directly behind Hill, and at Dashcam 3:37, Layton activated the police vehicle’s blue lights. Hill immediately began pulling away from the police vehicle, and the engine throttle on the police vehicle can be heard as Defendants pursued him. Id. Layton then asked, “Did he turn his lights off?” Id. at 3:49. When the blue lights were activated, Hill’s vehicle lights turned off, id. at 3:37, but it is unclear from the dashcam why that occurred.
At Dashcam 3:53, Hill’s vehicle began swerving again, crossing from the middle lane to the right lane and back. Defendants then activated the police vehicle’s sirens. Hill suddenly slowed down, id. at 4:19, briefly extended his left arm out of the front driver’s side window, id. at 4:23, and subsequently came to a near-complete stop, id. at 4:25. Hill then pulled onto the right embankment of the now two-lane highway and again settled to a near-complete stop. Id. at 4:33. Suddenly, Hill took a U-turn across the two lanes of the highway. Id. When he reached the left embankment (with his vehicle pointed backwards down the highway), his vehicle slid down a steep slope and settled at the bottom against the median’s tree line. Id. at 4:33-4:40.
Layton parked the police vehicle on the highway with the vehicle’s nose (and Dashcam view) pointed at Hill’s vehicle. Id. at 4:40. Defendants exited the police vehicle, and Bone immediately issued three verbal commands to “Get out of the car now.” Id. at 4:48. Defendants appear on the dashcam with their guns drawn and pointed at Hill, who remained in his vehicle throughout the encounter. The following verbal exchange occurred between Dashcam 4:48 and 5:06:
BONE: Get out of the car now! Get out of the car now! Get out of the car now!
LAYTON: Show me your hands! Do it now! Put your hands up! Put your hands up!
BONE: You got him? I got you.2
LAYTON: Put your hands up! Let me see your hands!
HILL: My door doesn’t open.
BONE: Put your hands up!
HILL: My door doesn’t open.
LAYTON: Put your hands out the door! Put your hands out the door! Do it now!
At this point, Defendants had progressed to within a few feet of Hill’s vehicle, with Layton to the left of Bone. Mem. Supp. Summ. J. (D. ECF No. 43) at 6. In response to Layton’s commands, Hill put his left arm out of the front driver’s side window. Dashcam at 5:07 His right arm remained in the vehicle at all times. Id. . Layton then continued to issue commands:
LAYTON: Put your hands out the door! Stop moving!
Right after this command, Hill quickly pulled his left arm inside the vehicle. Layton again commanded Hill to put his hands out the door.
Defendants then moved to a position nearly directly outside Hill’s door. Between Dashcam 5:11 and 5:13, Bone moved to a position near the back driver’s side door of Hill’s vehicle, shined his flashlight into the vehicle, and then moved back to his original position near the front driver’s side door.
LAYTON: Put your hands out the window! Put your hands out the window! Reaching, reaching, reaching!
As he said the above at Dashcam 5:14, Layton backed away from Hill’s vehicle, and Bone swiftly stepped forward, positioning himself directly outside Hill’s window. Bone pointed his flashlight directly into the window, and backed away quickly as the following was said near-simultaneously:
BONE: Stop reaching, he’s got a gun!
LAYTON: Gun!
When Defendants commanded Hill to stop reaching, the Dashcam shows Hill making movements around the center console and obscured passenger side of his vehicle. Directly after the command to stop reaching, two gunshots were fired by Bone and one by Layton. Id. at 5:17. Bone fired one last gunshot at Dashcam 5:19. After firing, Defendants both said they could no longer see the gun. Id. at 5:23-6:38. Bone went around to the passenger side of Hill’s vehicle, where he found a gun in the front passenger seat. Id. at 6:51; J.A. 363-68. Hill died at the scene.[ii]
Benton, the Administrator of Hill’s estate, filed suit and alleged that the troopers used excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment when they shot Hill. The troopers filed motions for summary judgment and qualified immunity. The district court granted summary judgment for the troopers, finding that they did not violate the Fourth Amendment, as their use of deadly force was objectively reasonable. Benton appealed the grant of summary judgment to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.
It is important to note that, at this stage of the litigation, the evidence must be viewed in a light most favorable to the plaintiff, unless the plaintiff’s allegations are clearly contradicted by video evidence. Thus, if the plaintiff’s allegations of fact are not clearly contradicted by video, the court must credit the plaintiff’s version of events.
It is also important to note that when a government official files a motion for qualified immunity, a plaintiff must satisfy a two-pronged test to defeat the official’s qualified immunity. First, the plaintiff must show that the official violated a federally protected right, here the Fourth Amendment. Second, the plaintiff must show that the law was clearly established such that a reasonable officer in the same situation would have known he was violating the plaintiff’s rights.
The court next examined the legal principles that apply to the use of force and use of deadly force. The court stated
The Supreme Court has directed courts to review excessive force cases pursuant to the Fourth Amendment‘s reasonableness standard. See Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 395 (1989). The Graham factors, which provide guideposts for this analysis, are: (1) the “severity of the crime” that is the subject of the stop or arrest, (2) “whether the suspect poses an immediate threat to the safety of the officers or others,” and (3) “whether [the suspect] is actively resisting arrest or attempting to evade arrest by flight.” Id. at 396.[iii]
The court of appeals also noted that, in deadly force cases, the second factor from Graham, the threat posed by the suspect, is “particularly important.” The court stated
[T]he Fourth Amendment permits the use of deadly force when a police officer “has probable cause to believe that a suspect poses a threat of serious physical harm, either to the officer or to others.” Franklin, 64 F.4th at 531.[iv]
The determination is made from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, “without regard to the officers underlying intent or motivation.”[v]
The court also discussed that, when determining if a constitutional violation occurred, which is the first prong of the test to defeat qualified immunity, the court must consider the totality of the circumstances surrounding the use of force. Specifically, the court stated
The inquiry under the constitutional prong is “based on the totality of the circumstances.” Aleman, 80 F.4th at 285 (citation omitted). “[A] court cannot . . . ‘narrow’ the totality-of-the-circumstances inquiry, to focus on only a single moment. It must look too . . . at any relevant events coming before. Barnes v. Felix, S. Ct. , , No. 23-1239, 2025 WL 1401083, at *5 (U.S. May 15, 2025). “The ‘reasonableness’ of a particular use of force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight.” Graham, 490 U.S. at 396. “The calculus of reasonableness must embody allowance for the fact that police officers are often forced to make split-second judgments—in circumstances that are tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving—about the amount of force that is necessary in a particular situation.” Id. at 396-97.[vi]
The court of appeals next set out to examine each factor from Graham v. Connor to the incident involving Hill in the case at hand.
Graham Factor One: The severity of the crime
Regarding the severity of the crime, the court noted that, when the troopers first observed Hill, he was traveling over 90 mph. When the troopers activated their blue lights, Hill accelerated and swerved across lanes, fleeing from the troopers. The court stated that Hill’s driving was such that would endanger the troopers and other motorists and provided the troopers probable cause to believe that Hill was committing the crime of felony eluding under Virginia law. While the plaintiff argued that misdemeanor eluding would be more appropriate, the court of appeals noted, that for the purposes of the analysis under Graham, Hill’s dangerous driving was enough to cause the first Graham factor to weigh in favor of the troopers.
Graham Factor Two: The immediate threat to officers
The court first noted that use of force cases are very fact specific; however, regarding lethal force cases that have been deemed objectively reasonable, these cases often
involved ‘a person in possession of, or suspected to be in possession of, a weapon’ who does not ‘obey commands’ and instead ‘makes some sort of furtive or other threatening movement with the weapon.'” Id. (quoting Knibbs v. Momphard, 30 F.4th 200, 225 (4th Cir. 2022), cert denied Momphard v. Knibbs, 143 S. Ct. 303 (2022) (mem.)).[vii]
The court then noted that, based on video evidence, some facts of the incident with Hill are not in dispute. The facts that were not in dispute were as follows: (1) Trooper Layton gave Hill four commands to put his hands out the door and two commands to put his hands out the window; (2) Hill put his left hand out of the window, but not his right; (3) between the third and fourth commands, Hill pulled his left arm that was outside the window, back into the vehicle; and (4) Hill was reaching toward the center console/passenger side of his vehicle.
Facts in dispute are whether Hill ever had the gun that was found in the passenger seat in his hand and if Hill pointed the gun at a trooper. These facts are in dispute because the video does not clearly contradict the plaintiff’s allegations of fact.
However, the court of appeals stated
Whether there was a gun in Hill’s hand or not, Layton gave six clear commands that Hill disobeyed, and Hill then made movements in direct violation of those commands. Defendants could have reasonably perceived that Hill had a gun due to the “character of the situation [being] transformed” See Knibbs, 30 F.4th at 220. Our “focus . . . [is] on [Hill’s] furtive movements after readily recognizable law enforcement officers ordered [him] to” put his hands out the window, stop moving, and drop a gun. See Knibbs, 30 F.4th at 221; id. at 222 (quoting Anderson, 247 F.3d at 131) (“[A]n officer does not have to wait until a gun is pointed at the officer before the officer is entitled to take action.”); see also Hensley ex rel. N. Carolina v. Price, 876 F.3d 573, 585 (4th Cir. 2017) (“If an officer directs a suspect to stop . . . [and] show his hands . . . the suspect’s continued movement likely will raise in the officer’s mind objectively grave and serious suspicions about the suspect’s intentions.”).[viii]
The court emphasized that Trooper Layton gave Hill clear verbal commands and “Hill did not merely fail to comply but also made furtive movements in direct violation of these commands.”[ix]
Therefore, the court of appeals determined that the second factor from Graham weighed in favor of the troopers.
Graham Factor Three: Resisting arrest or evading arrest by flight
The plaintiff argued that Hill stopped fleeing prior to the troopers’ use of deadly force. However, the court of appeals, from a review of the video noted that Hill fled from the troopers when they tried to stop him. The court noted that Hill stopped fleeing when his car became stuck on the highway embankment, “so Hill did not stop so much as he was unable to continue to evade by driving.”[x]
Thus, the court of appeals determined that this also weighed in favor of the troopers.
As such, the court of appeals held that the troopers were entitled to qualified immunity because the plaintiff was unable to establish a violation of the Fourth Amendment.
The court also examined whether the plaintiff would have been able to satisfy the second prong of the test to defeat qualified immunity, specifically if the law was clearly established. The court of appeals stated
There is no Supreme Court or Fourth Circuit caselaw that would have put Defendants on notice that their conduct was unlawful.
As discussed in section C-ii of this opinion, the “furtive movement” cases hold that officers may deploy lethal force when, after issuing clear commands, they reasonably perceive a suspect to be an immediate danger because of movements in violation of those commands. See, e.g., Slattery, 939 F.2d at 214-17; Elliott, 99 F.3d at 641-42; Anderson, 247 F.3d at 128, 130.[xi]
Thus, the court of appeals held that the troopers are also entitled to qualified immunity based on the second prong of the qualified immunity test.
Therefore, the court of appeals affirmed the grant of qualified immunity for the troopers.
Note: Court holdings can vary significantly between jurisdictions. As such, it is advisable to seek the advice of a local prosecutor or legal adviser regarding questions on specific cases. This article is not intended to constitute legal advice on a specific case.
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1 References to “Dashcam” refer to Defendants’ police vehicle dashcam.
2 Bone’s words indicated that he was passing primary command authority to Layton. Mem. Supp. Summ. J. (D. ECF No. 43) at 7.
[i] No. 23-1680 (4th Cir. June 3, 2025)
[ii] Id. at 2-6
[iii] Id. at 9-10 (emphasis added)
[iv] Id. at 10 (emphasis added)
[v] Id.
[vi] Id. at 10-11 (emphasis added)
[vii] Id. at 12
[viii] Id. at 16 (emphasis added)
[ix] Id. at 17
[x] Id. at 18
[xi] Id. at 19 (emphasis added)
