Last Friday, I finished a task I have been working on for several days.  I have been reading the material with was developed in the investigation that was conducted as a result of the officer involved shooting in our county on March 5, 2011.  There are about 300 pages of material, including transcribed witness statements, photos, victim statements and many other things.

My task was to understand what happened that led up to the incident and what happened during the incident and whether or not the Deputy involved acted reasonably and ultimately, to form an opinion as whether or not charges would be filed.  This is standard procedure in police shooting cases and is something which every Prosecuting Attorney is involved in when there is a use of lethal force by a Law Enforcement officer.

Part of this analysis is to determine what is the legal standard which is applied when an officer uses deadly force.  This entails an examination of the laws of Washington and US Supreme court decisions which give guidance when making a decision of this nature.

Briefly: The use of deadly force is reasonable if there is probable cause to believe the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others.  The conduct of the officer is evaluated from the point of view of a reasonable officer on the scene, in light of the facts and circumstances confronting him and making allowance for the necessity of split second decisions.

After I gained an understanding of what happened, my job was to apply this standard and make a determination as to whether a reasonable officer in the same circumstance would have acted in a similar fashion.

In this case, the basic facts were that an officer was confronted in a darkened room with an intoxicated person who was armed.  The person refused commands to drop the weapon and was bringing the gun to bear upon the officer.  The officer had no other choice but to use force that could have been deadly.  The subject in this case was wounded but survived.

I made the decision that in this circumstance, a reasonable officer would have likewise believed that the subject posed a significant threat of serious physical harm to him.  Therefore the officer’s use of deadly force was reasonable and the shooting was legally justified.