Spencer v. Glaser

Incident Summary & Facts

Around 11:30 p.m. one night in October 2023, John Sims called 911 from a family home in Manteo, North Carolina, asking for medical help for Sylvester Selby, “who was suffering from a stab wound to the heart.” Dare County Deputies DuWayne Gibbs and Edward Glaser III responded. Gibbs, who was closer to the door, ordered Selby outside, and Selby came out. Under Gibbs’s flashlight, Selby was holding a kitchen knife in one hand and an apple in the other; the complaint says he held them in a “non-threat[en]ing manner.” Blood was dripping from his chest. Gibbs ordered him to put the knife down. Selby said “Okay” but kept the knife. The body-camera footage shows he then jumped down the two or three porch steps and landed close to Gibbs, raising his arms slightly above shoulder height as he braced for the landing. Glaser ordered him to drop the knife and, within seconds, fired the first shot.

Selby fell over a bicycle, landed on his back, and dropped both the knife and the apple. For about 12 seconds he flailed on the ground while Sims pleaded with Glaser not to shoot again. The video shows Glaser repeatedly told Selby to stop moving and stay down. Right after those commands, Selby got onto his hands and knees and tried to get up. The complaint says he tried to flee between the deputies without lunging at them. The video “clearly shows” he lunged toward Glaser, who then fired twice more. Selby died at the scene.

Procedural posture: Selby’s estate sued Glaser under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for Fourth Amendment excessive force. It also brought North Carolina assault, battery and wrongful-death claims against Glaser and the Sheriff. Relying on body-camera footage, the district court dismissed the complaint under Rule 12(b)(6). The estate appealed.

Core Legal Issue

(1) On a motion to dismiss, when may a court rely on body-camera footage that contradicts the complaint? (2) Taking the complaint as true except where the video blatantly contradicts it, did the estate plausibly allege that the first shot, or the second and third shots, violated the Fourth Amendment?

The Holding

The Fourth Circuit held that the estate failed to plausibly allege a Fourth Amendment violation as to any of the three shots. The state-law claims failed with the federal claims, and dismissal was affirmed.

The Court’s Analysis:

• Video at the pleading stage: Under Doriety, a court may consider video that is integral to the complaint and whose authenticity is unchallenged. It may do so only where the video “blatantly contradicts” the allegations. The district court went too far in places; for example, the video did not clearly show uneven terrain. Two portions did qualify. The video discredited the inference that Selby was surrendering on the stairs, and it disproved the allegation that he “did not lunge” toward the deputies.
• First shot: The estate forfeited its challenge to the first shot, but the court discussed it because earlier events bear on later ones (Barnes v. Felix). Selby was bleeding, ignored the order to drop the knife, and leaped toward the deputies with the knife in hand. A reasonable officer could view “a noncompliant and charging suspect as an imminent threat” (Rambert; Sigman).
• Second and third shots: The earlier knife charge shaped how a reasonable officer would read what followed. When a suspect who has been shot rises and moves toward an officer, the officer may reasonably think “the threat posed . . . ha[s] not passed.” A lunge at a slight angle rather than at center mass made no constitutional difference.
• “Unarmed” argument rejected: An “officer need not see [a] weapon in the suspect’s hands to find him objectively dangerous.” Even if Glaser saw that the knife had been dropped, he could not confirm Selby had no other weapon or was not going for the deputy’s gun. The court will not “second-guess the split-second judgment of a trained police officer.”
• Intent to flee: Even accepting that Selby meant to escape, no facts suggested a reasonable officer would have read his lunge that way.
• State claims: The estate tied the state claims to the federal ones, so they failed too, including the respondeat superior claim against the Sheriff.