Porter v. Osborn

FISHER, Circuit Judge:

This case raises the question of the appropriate standard of culpability to apply to a police officer who kills a suspect in the course of investigating a suspicious car parked alongside an Alaska highway, under circumstances that suggest the officer may have helped to create an emergency situation by his own excessive actions. It comes in the context of a lawsuit brought by the parents of the victim, claiming the officer violated their Fourteenth Amendment substantive due process right of familial association with their deceased son. They contend the officer’s actions…