75 Am. U. L. Rev. F. 79 (2026).

Abstract

This Comment analyzes the qualified immunity doctrine and Estevis v. Cantu, a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit decision extending qualified immunity to police officers for nine shots they fired at a suspect in his vehicle at the end of a car chase. The decision followed a § 1983 lawsuit the suspect filed against officers for the life-altering injuries he incurred as a result of the police shooting. In its decision, the Fifth Circuit reversed the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, Laredo Division’s nuanced factual analysis, which granted qualified immunity to the officers for the first three shots fired but refused to grant immunity for the last six shots fired. This Comment highlights the fluctuating qualified immunity precedent on which the Fifth Circuit based its narrow approach, namely how the Supreme Court has expanded and constricted the clearly established law standard. It also underscores that courts have inherited this confusion, articulating and applying the clearly established law standard inconsistently, even within the same jurisdiction in Estevis’s case and across jurisdictions in cases that are factually similar to it.

Ultimately, the piece identifies a bright-line excessive force rule inspired by the facts of the case and recent Supreme Court § 1983 qualified immunity jurisprudence in the Eighth Amendment context that clearly establishes the law in this case. Under this rule, officers’ use of force is per se excessive when applied to an unarmed suspect who they have immobilized and is, thus, already apprehended and in their custody. This rule aims to redress the confusion in the standard’s application to clearly establish the law in excessive force cases like Estevis’s. This approach also promotes clarity for officers in on-the-spot decision making and allows more meritorious claims to reach a jury as the country calls for enhanced police accountability.

* Junior Staffer, American University Law Review, Volume 75; J.D. Candidate, May 2027, American University Washington College of Law; B.A., Government, 2020, Georgetown University. Many thanks to my Faculty Advisor Professor Elizabeth Earle Beske for her invaluable guidance on structure and content throughout the production of this piece. Her insights on Fourth Amendment and qualified immunity Supreme Court jurisprudence helped bring this argument to fruition and strengthen its foundations. Special thanks also to my Note and Comment Editor Kenzie Vallejos for generously dedicating her time and thoughtful feedback, which greatly enhanced the quality and organization of this writing. Finally, I want to thank the Senior Forum Editor Lauren Zipp, Senior Technical Editor Katie McGee, and all other American University Law Review staffers who assisted in refining this piece for publication.